Barbara Margarethe Eggert |
Since 1996, one of Barbara M. Eggert’s research foci lies on media that combine text and images. She wrote her MA thesis (2000) on illuminated fable manuscripts and early prints whereas for her MA thesis in Adult Education/Museum Studies (2010) she analysed audio scripts for audio guides in museums. In her PhD thesis (2009), she investigated functions of the imagery on medieval vestments (13th to 15th century) with respect to the liturgy of the Holy Mass.
After spending a research period at the Vitra Design Museum (2014–2016), she now holds the position of a research associate with the Department of Arts and Cultural Science at the Danube University, Krems. Eggert also works as a freelance curator for Gallery Daliko and writes scenarios for Graphic novels/webcomics. Recent publications “Edification with Thread and Needle. On Uses and Functions of Architectonic Elements on Medieval Liturgical Vestments and Their Representations in Contemporary Paintings of the Mass of St. Gregory (13th–16th c.),” in: Clothing the Sacred. Liturgical Textiles in the Middle Ages, Mateusz Kapustka/Warren T. Woodfin, Berlin 2016, pp. 53-69. “Textile Perspectives. The Noli me tangere Motif on Medieval Liturgical Vestments,” in: Noli Me Tangere: Text Image Context: Contributions of Exegesis, Art History, Philosophy and Literature Studies Concerning the Prohibition of Touch in John 20:1, ed. Barbara Baert/Reimund Bieringer, Leuven Leuven 2016, pp. 253–269. (c) Andrea Reischer, [email protected] |
clio at the cloister:
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As founders, patrons, and abbesses women of the thirteenth century had varying degrees of (political) influence and used it for the benefit of their convents. However, irrespective of their rank and influence, nuns and female canons were liturgically marginalized as they were denied priesthood and its inherent prerogative of physical presence at altar and pulpit. Both places were out of reach for these women in many ways: Nuns and female canons even were architecturally isolated and had to attend service invisibly and inaudibly (for example, from a gallery), if their church had a double function and also served as a parish church. This concept of liminality also led to visual and audible impairment of the female convent as architectonic elements blocked sight and sound of the liturgy – at least partially. Precious textiles, however, which were often manufactured by members of female convents themselves, offered a variety of opportunities to cross (architectural) borders and challenge marginality. The paper shows how vestments and paraments of the altar could be functionalized in order to crack the frame of common social patterns and margins by deviating from iconographical norms and standards and modifying those openly or subversively. This aesthetic strategy will be discussed with a focus on a textile ensemble from the 13th century: the Göss Vestments (Gösser Ornat, Museum for Applied Arts, Vienna). With this set of textiles, the abbess Kunegunde II re-wrote cloister history and even challenged the hierarchy of ecclesiastical ranks in putting the margin on centre stage. |