Historians of Netherlandish Art Conference (HNA Boston, MA, July 14-17, 2027)
Session: Dressing the Saints in Netherlandish Art
Organizers: Ragnhild Bø (University of Oslo), Samantha Smith (University of Oslo), and Sarah Moran (University of Oslo)

At the dawn of the late-medieval ‘first globalization’, Netherlandish artists contended with the ever-expanding ‘world of things’ by depicting exotic material objects in their religious scenes, creating new visual languages to describe the earthly and the divine, Christian and pagan, ancient and modern, and European and foreign. Textiles and garments played a central role in this process, particularly in the clothing of saints, who appeared in costumes that differed markedly from those of the lay donors they often accompanied, marking them out as belonging to a different period in time and the spiritual realm. Early hermits might appear in plain woolen robes, while virgin martyrs and the Virgin Mary might be swathed in ornate, fantastical brocades and embroideries.

The task of this session is to explore the clothing worn by saints in early modern Netherlandish art, asking how pictorial descriptions of their dress created or maintained truth claims. The organizers of the panel particularly seek to shed light on how artists ‘transferred’ clothes from the secular world to religious realms, as well as how painted or sculpted imitations of textiles could be markers of sanctity, identity, social status or transcendence – in other words, how saintly costume could become “supremely semiotic in its supplementarity and arbitrariness” (Nagel and Wood 2010: 89).

While the period leading up to the mid-sixteenth century might be described as the era with the most flamboyant saintly couture, later artistic representations, and their relationships to changing discourses around materiality and salvation, are also of interest. They invite papers that investigate saints’ dress from interdisciplinary perspectives, drawing, for example, from textile history, theater history, anthropological theory, contemporary theological, artistic, and sartorial discourses, and archival sources like guild records and contracts with artists.

For consideration, please submit an abstract of 200-250 words, along with an academic CV listing PhD institution and date expected or received, as well as recent publications, to Ragnhild Bø (r.m.bo@teologi.uio.no), Samantha Smith (smith.samanthaleanne@gmail.com), and Sarah Moran (sarah.joan.moran@gmail.com). The deadline is 15 September 2026.

Visit the HNA website to view the full list of calls for papers for this conference.