080040 EX Kunst in Wien: Making Medieval Art: Techniques, Materials, and Meaning in Vienna's Collections (2026S)

Making Medieval Art: Techniques, Materials, and Meaning in Vienna’s Collections
This course offers an introduction to the materials, techniques, and workshop practices that shaped medieval art between c. 1000 and 1400. Using Vienna’s exceptional collections as our laboratory, we will study how painters, metalworkers, glassmakers, sculptors, and textile makers conceived and crafted their works across diverse regions of Europe and the wider Mediterranean world. Through seminar discussions and direct encounters with objects (including handling sessions), students will explore how artisanal knowledge and material choices informed artistic meaning and function. Particular attention will be devoted to art from the Italian peninsula, while also highlighting exchanges with Northern Europe, Byzantium, and the Islamicate world. Close examination of artworks (including handling sessions), as well as analyses of primary sources will be key. Students will learn how to conduct object-based research, tracing the craft of an artifact from initial design to execution, original display, and later afterlives in modern museum settings.

Plaster Casts Collection:
A distinctive component of the course centers on the collection of 19th-century plaster casts housed at the Institute für Kunstgeschichte, approached both as a study resource and as historical artifacts in their own right. In the first meeting, students will be introduced to the casts within the context of the nineteenth-century rediscovery, classification, and canonization of medieval art, when plaster casts played a central role in art-historical pedagogy, museum practice, and the construction of stylistic narratives. Students will learn basic methods of material examination, archival research, and provenance analysis, paying particular attention to the conditions under which medieval works were replicated. In the final session, we will return to the collection to synthesize the skills developed throughout the course, assessing the collection’s present didactic function and imagining its possible futures.

PLEASE NOTE:
Each class is divided into two parts:
1. Morning session: In-class discussion of a medieval craft technique.
2. Afternoon session: A guided visit to a Vienna collection, where students present about artworks first-hand.
3. Students will need to cover the cost of their own admission tickets to some museums.

The course is offered in collaboration with the Dom Museum, which generously provide access to its collection.