Illustration: Digital rendering of the church of Santa Maria degli Innocenti, Florence, c.1500. Image © florence4d.org.
Event: Public lecture: 'Virtual futures for Renaissance altarpieces: Interdisciplinary approaches and integrated digital technologies', by Prof. Donal Cooper (University of Cambridge)
Dates: Tuesday 5 April
Time: 18:00
Venue: Aula Magna, Valletta Campus
The Department of Art and Art History is organising a public lecture titled, 'Virtual futures for Renaissance altarpieces: Interdisciplinary approaches and integrated digital technologies', by Prof. Donal Cooper (University of Cambridge), on 5 April 2022 at 18:00, at the Aula Prima, University of Malta Valletta Campus.
Digital technologies open multiple new opportunities for the reconstruction and visualization of Italian church interiors, the most important arena for the display and reception of the visual arts in the pre-modern period. The historical sources that can be marshalled to understand Italian ecclesiastical monuments are so rich that the complexity and volume of primary material has outstripped the practical parameters of conventional print publication. Only digital platforms have the potential capacity and functionality to capture the topographical intricacies and diachronic dynamism of these spaces.
Digital visualisation is an especially powerful tool for the recontextualization (aimed at both research communities and broader public) of the numerous Italian altarpieces which are now displayed in museums and galleries. This paper reviews recent work on central Italian church interiors in Pisa (in collaboration with the Universities of Pisa, Padua, and Suor Orsola Benincase, Naples), in Florence (for the Florence 4d – project, a Getty Foundation funded University of Exeter-University of Cambridge collaboration), and presents preliminary results from the ongoing fieldwork at Sant’Agostino in San Gimignano (a collaboration between the University of Cambridge and the British School at Rome).
The San Gimignano survey integrates LIDAR scanning with the BSR’s state-of-the-art Ground Penetrating Radar to map subsurface features at building scale, further extending the scope of digital models to encompass non-invasive archaeology (for spaces where conventional excavation is usually not a viable possibility). Looking forwards, the paper considers how future digital visualizations of church interiors might integrate archaeology, archives, and altarpieces into a coherent virtual research space, at the same time creating digital assets which can be repurposed for public-facing interpretation through AR apps and other immersive applications.