Introduction to Supplement 10, 2018.

The Medieval Kingdom of Sicily Image Database uses new media technologies to reframe our understanding of medieval Europe by focusing on the role of the built environment for the formation of State identity in the medieval Kingdom of Sicily during the Norman, Swabian, Angevin and Aragonese dynasties (c. 950-1420). The material in the database is important for two reasons: the significance of South Italy as a prototype of multicultural State formation and the highly fragmentary condition (war bombardment, earthquakes, urban transformation) of the sites that played a central role in the power structures of the Kingdom. A comprehensive database of historical images of monuments and cities (prints, drawings, maps, photographs) made by scholars, artists and travellers from the fifteenth century to the twentieth century, can enable scholars and the public to recover the appearance of the landscape, cities, and individual monuments prior to radical renovation or destructions. An interdisciplinary research team is conducting a systematic survey and critical cataloguing of images dispersed in the archives, museums and libraries of Italy, Europe and US.

The French Institut national d’histoire de l’art (INHA) has launched a project for scholars and the broader public that proposes an innovative way of accessing Medieval Christian images. The relationship between pictorial content and religious ideology in Medieval Christian images is much more nuanced, and more expressive, than simple storytelling. Ontology of Medieval Christianity in Images (OMCI) is concerned with this ontological level of analysis. The OMCI team of art historians, graduate students, and technology experts intends to build a web resource that will identify concepts and iconographical themes linked to Medieval Christian knowledge and belief systems. These will be augmented by visual examples from the art of that period. By building nuanced vocabularies, OMCI will allow databases and scholars to better represent how such images depict philosophical and spiritual themes that have been diminished in current approaches.

The digital archive DANAEM: Dance and Art in the long Middle Ages is one of the scientific results of the project 'Traces and figure of dance in the long Middle Ages. Iconographic, textual and ethnographic corpus in the Iberian Peninsula and its projection in Latin America (FFI2013-42939-P)’, financed by the Spanish Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad (2014-2017). The archive gathers, in several databases, a literary and artistic corpus of dance in the Iberian Peninsula during the long Middle Ages, as well as five documentary videos of short duration about traditional modern dances whose origin can be traced back to the medieval and post-medieval period. Performances represented in works of art, literary descriptions and references to dance with an ethical-moral character are listed and organised in a webpage based on 3 sections: literary space, performative stage and contemporary geography. The technical specifications of the works of art and literary references go with introductions referring to each field. Once online (from April 2018), the web will work as a continually growing tool for Dance Studies.

This paper focuses on two digital projects that have attempted to reconstitute Renaissance altarpieces within virtual church interiors. Both concern Florentine churches that are no longer extant: the Clarissan nunnery church of Santa Chiara in the southern Oltrarno quarter and the Benedictine convent church of San Pier Maggiore to the east of the Cathedral. Both reconstructions were commissioned in conjunction with London institutions: Santa Chiara for the Victoria and Albert Museum in 2009; San Pier Maggiore for the National Gallery in 2015. The two virtual reconstructions were, however, very different - in part because the nature of the available data suggested different solutions in each case, in part because the more recent project on San Pier Maggiore was able to build on our experience of the older reconstruction of Santa Chiara. As well as presenting these projects, the paper offers an auto-critical evaluation of them, acknowledging where the final reconstructions could not realize their authors’ original ambitions, and hopefully drawing some lessons to help future work in this area. Key concerns remain the embedding of ‘paradata’ and degrees of uncertainty within 3D visualizations following the guidance of the London Charter, a widely shared but rarely realised aspiration. Meanwhile, new opportunities are offered by the integration of photogrammetry, LIDAR scanning, augmented reality and geo-radar data.

This essay describes the use of Ground-Penetrating Radar (GPR) to establish the location and dimensions of the destroyed choir screen at the church of Sta. Chiara in Naples. On the basis of this new evidence, inserted within a laser scan of the church that provides its exact dimensions, the authors have been able to reconstruct a hypothetical model of the screen’s original appearance. The model, if correct, suggests that the choir screen not only contained altars to Saints Francis and Claire (now present in the flanking side chapels), but also that it supported an upper gallery that connected the wide tribunes on either side of the nave. It is hoped that this hypothetical model will stimulate new research on the décor, liturgy, and ceremonial functions of this important Neapolitan church.

Carolingian Culture at Reichenau and St. Gall is a digital research tool providing access to the material and intellectual cultures of Carolingian monasteries. The website was produced at the University of California, Los Angeles between 2003 and 2009 with the financial sponsorship of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The first phase focuses on the Plan of St. Gall (CSG 1092) and provides high-resolution imaging of the Plan and related data bases on Carolingian material culture. The second phase reconstitutes virtually the ninth century libraries of St. Gall and of Reichenau including 170 complete manuscripts today found in 17 European libraries. For each manuscript, in addition to high-resolution access to the manuscript itself, metadata provides information on the contents, codicology, and bibliography. Finally, a series of commissioned essays introduce users to Carolingian monastic culture.

The Authors present CENOBIUM, a web-based system designed to support the work of art historians. It provides access to multimedia content and related descriptive text on a specific topic: capitals in Romanesque cloisters. This paper discusses the motivation behind the decision to develop this web resource, taken more than ten years ago. It describes the initial design of the often system and how it evolved to keep pace with technological developments. In a context where the results of ICT-CH projects (digital tools, websites) have life span barely exceeding the timeframe of the actual project, CENOBIUM can be considered a success. It has been operating and steadily been updated with new content and latest technologies throughout its decade-long life.

Mapping Gothic (http://www.mappinggothic.com/) first began in summer 2008 as Mapping Gothic France. Funded by the Andrew Mellon Foundation, the project was initiated at the Columbia University, Department of Art History and Archaeology. The team conducted five expeditions to gather high-resolution images and other data from great Gothic churches, which in this ambitious website project were located both in space and time. As work pro- gressed the geographical scope was widened to include England and hopefully also Spain and Germany. Whereas pictures can be satisfactorily represented in two dimensions in a book or on a computer screen, space - especially Gothic space - demands a different approach, one which embraces not only the architectonic volume but also time and narrative. The intention has been not just to develop a more appropriate way of representing the spaciousness of indi- vidual monuments, but also to provide the user of the site with new ways to understand the relationship of hundreds of buildings conventionally described as ‘Gothic’.

This paper aims to present two projects carried out within the Digital Humanities field and related to the study of medieval feminine spirituality: the Atlas CLAUSTRA and the SPIRITUAL LANDSCAPES project. Both headed by the University of Barcelona, in collaboration with researchers at a large number of internationally renowned universities and research centres, they aim to study the medieval spiritual landscapes. The first does so through the creation of an Atlas and Catalogue of female spirituality spaces in Mediterranean Europe between the 11th and 16th centuries, and the second, through the study of the territorial impact of the foundation of monasteries on rural and urban landscapes during the Middle Ages. All this is based on the design, implementation and development of two powerful digital platforms that constitute a shared work space, scientific study tool, and instrument for the dissemination of the knowledge gained through the research.