Journal ARS 47 (2014) 1

Barbara BALÁŽOVÁ

Úvod

In this collection we would like to present to the wider public the papers given at the international conference, Concept – Image – Reception. Baroque Ceiling Painting in the Setting of European Monasteries, which took place in Bratislava from the 19th to the 21st September 2013. The conference was organised by the Institute of Art History of the Slovak Academy of Sciences, Bratislava, in cooperation with the Research Group for Baroque Ceiling Painting in Central Europe (BCPCE), the Department of Art History, Faculty of Arts, Masaryk University in Brno and the Institute of Art History, Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, with financial support from the VEGA Foundation, project Baroque Ceiling Painting and Its Meaning in the Monastic Culture in the 18th Century (Nr. VEGA 2/0135/11). The main theme of the conference was the relationship between monumental ceiling paintings and texts relating to them, and their reception, in the European countries in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The formulation of questions and ŠTÚDIE / ARTICLES ARS 47, 2014, 1 Introduction Barbara BALÁŽOVÁ the search for answers to them took place within the framework of the following thematic fields: the relationship that written sources (contracts, correspondence, inventories, etc.) and historical texts with an iconographical content (literature, concepts – concetti, manuscripts or printed descriptions) have to the form the painting subsequently takes; the artistic approach to and formal treatment of the pictorial themes in relationship to architecture, to ceremonial and liturgical practice; the reception of the ceiling paintings and current possibilities for understanding them (interpretation of contemporary descriptions, topographical and pilgrimage literature and other sources); the relationship between ceiling paintings and contemporary iconographical literature and post-Tridentine image theory; the migration of pictorial motifs and artistic exchange in Europe. We would like to express warm thanks to everyone who actively participated in the conference and helped to continue activities of the Research Group for Baroque Ceiling Painting in Central Europe.