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News Release
Contact: Connie Rhoton, NIU School of Art
(815) 753-1474
March 15, 2005
Toronto art history professor to address
German medieval art during NIU visit
DeKalb — Adam Cohen, assistant professor of art history at the University of Toronto and a specialist in the art of early Medieval Europe, will speak next month at the Northern Illinois University School of Art.
Cohen will address “Be Filled Unto All the Fullness of God – Revelation and Emulation in German Medieval Art” during a 5 p.m. Tuesday, April 12, lecture. The event takes place in Room 100 of the NIU Art Building.
His talk will examine several manuscript illuminations dating from the 11th through the 16th century that focus on the cross as a model for monastic behavior. Many are connected to the passage from Ephesians 3:17-19: “That Christ may dwell by faith in your hearts; that by being rooted and founded in charity, you may be able to comprehend with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth; to know also the charity of Christ, which surpasseth all knowledge, that you may be filled unto all the fullness of God.”
The presentation will show the central importance of the cross and its symbolism in the monastic culture of medieval Germany, especially among women. It also will demonstrate how images were used to construct sophisticated visual expressions of the desire for union with Christ and the deep roots of a spirituality usually associated with the later Middle Ages.
Cohen has written extensively on the representation and patronage of women in Ottonian Germany. He is the author of “The Uta Codex: Art, Philosophy, and Reform in Eleventh-Century Germany,” a book-length study of the lavishly illuminated manuscript commissioned by Uta, the abbess of the monastery of Niedermunster. He also has written numerous articles, including “The Temptation of Women: Bernward and Eve at Hildesheim,” which he co-authored with Anne Derbes. His current projects include a new book titled “The Garden of Delights: Medieval Art and Ideas.”
For more information, please contact Connie Rhoton at (815) 753-1474.
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