Lisa Pon & Tracy Cosgriff: Pages, Plaster, and Computer Screens: Reimagining Raphael and the Library of Julius II   2023 Terry K. Simmons Lecture
Monday, March 13, 6:00pm, Stone Auditorium, 210 Woldenberg Art Center

Abstract:

Raphael’s frescoes in the Stanza della Segnatura, once the private library of Julius II, manifest a monumental thesis on Renaissance theories of word and image. The rediscovery of the Stanza’s collection of deluxe volumes demonstrates that the chamber was animated by a recursive chain of media, from painting to text. Using 3D technologies to reunite the books and the frescoes, this panoramic reconstruction illuminates new dimensions of the Stanza’s experience for its early visitors and elucidates the synergistic intellectual web on which the room's design was predicated. It asks: How was the Stanza engaged by its early modern audience? How might the spatial analysis of the pope’s literary collection shape our interpretation of the chamber’s meaning? How does the relationship of text and image inform our understanding of Renaissance cultures of reading? And how do these investigations inform current urgent discussions about what a library has been and could become? 

This lecture is supported by the William L. Duren ’26 Professorship Program.