The Rylands Lunchtime Online Seminar: The Making of the Cranach Workshop’s Copy of the Armorial of Bianca Maria Sforza (Rylands German MS 2)
| Dates: | 6 June 2024 |
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| Times: | 13:00 - 13:45 |
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| What is it: | Seminar |
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| Organiser: | John Rylands Library |
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| Who is it for: | University staff, External researchers, Adults, Alumni, General public |
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We'll be joined by researcher Ben Pope for this online talk focussing on Elector August of Saxony (1526–86) who, in 1565 commissioned Lucas Cranach the Younger (1515–86) to make a copy of an ‘old armorial’ that August had previously borrowed from Cranach’s Wittenberg workshop. The surviving correspondence between the prince and the artist tells us much about how this commission was carried out, but there is still more that we can learn from analysis of the armorial manuscript itself (now Rylands German MS 2). Reconstructing the production process of this manuscript can help us to better understand the nature of the original ‘old armorial’ (now lost), which was almost certainly closely associated with Empress Bianca Maria Sforza (1472–1510), second wife of Emperor Maximilian I, and may have been a project intended to buttress her precarious position at the Habsburg court.
Ben Pope is currently a fixed-term lecturer in medieval European history at the University of Manchester, and was until January 2024 a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow in the John Rylands Research Institute and Library.
Tony Richards is Senior Photographer at the JRRIL and the lead photographer on advanced imaging techniques.
To book a free place for this online event please follow the link to Eventbrite
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/armorial-of-bianca-maria-sforza-rylands-german-manuscript-2-tickets-827193466927
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