Detail of Luke the Evangelist, writing, in the Lindisfarne Gospels; England, c. 700 with tenth-century additions. London, BL, Cotton MS Nero D IV, fol. 137v.

Parchment as Medium

Megan McNamee (University of Edinburgh)

Parchment is a familiar medium. Animal skin, specially prepared, and employed primarily as a substrate for written communication, it is a substance that many researchers across fields of study regularly scrutinise and handle. There is now no shortage of scholarship that refers to parchment’s experiential qualities—its varied textures, smell, even sound—and its symbolic, especially Christological, significance as skin. This talk will focus on aspects of the medium that have been somewhat taken for granted including its (quasi) two-dimensionality, sidedness, relative opacity, colour and pliability; and consider its uses outside the codical context in order to better understand the expressive possibillites of parchment in premodern Europe and the qualities for which it was valued.

Megan McNamee holds an MA from the Courtauld and a PhD from the University of Michigan. She is assistant professor in the history of art at the University of Edinburgh, where she teaches on the interplay of art and science in premodern Europe. Her research has been generously supported by, among others, the British Academy, Kress Foundation and Max Planck Institute for the History of Science. At present, she is a Museum Scholar at the Getty Institute, Los Angeles.

Save the date for the final lecture (unless specified, lectures take place @ 12:00 PM): Friday, April 12: Beth Saunders (University of Maryland, Baltimore County), "Enmeshed: Lace and Women's Labor in 19th-Century Photographs."