The Miniature: Unreal Presence

Perspectives from Archaeology, Art History, and Architecture

Carl Knappett, Matt Kavaler (eds)

Pages: approx. 220 p.
Size:216 x 280 mm
Illustrations:9 b/w, 59 col.

Language(s):English
Publication Year:2025

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ISBN: 978-2-503-61893-7
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This volume explores the theme of the miniature – an ever-present form of material culture in human societies that is both reductive and intensifying, comforting and unsettling.

Subject(s)

BIO

Carl Knappett holds the Walter Graham/ Homer Thompson Chair in Aegean Prehistory at the University of Toronto. His books include Thinking Through Material Culture: An Interdisciplinary Perspective (Penn Press, 2005) and Aegean Bronze Age Art: Meaning in the Making (CUP, 2020). His main interests are material culture theory, network concepts and methods, and the east Mediterranean in later prehistory. He directs archaeological fieldwork at the site of Palaikastro in east Crete.

Ethan Matt Kavaler is Director of the Centre for Renaissance and Reformation Studies and Professor of Art History at the University of Toronto. He is the author of Pieter Bruegel: Parables of Order and Enterprise and Renaissance Gothic: Architecture and the Arts in Europe, 1470-1540. His work addresses notions such as ornament, performance and theatricality, modal change, and the history of the emotions. His book on Netherlandish Renaissance Sculpture is forthcoming from Penn State University Press.

Summary

Though encountered in a wide range of societies past and present, miniatures have often been dismissed as playthings or trifles unworthy of scholarly attention. However, as object worlds increasingly make themselves impossible to ignore, the generative processes of material culture have come to the fore. One such process is miniaturisation, which is particularly intriguing as a means by which relations are created across object worlds. The scaling down from a prototypical object to a reduced version thereof is a powerful form of condensation and commentary. This volume integrates perspectives on this process from art history and archaeology, creating a new interdisciplinary outlook on this cross-cultural phenomenon.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction
Carl Knappett and Matt Kavaler

‘Intimate Immensities’: Posidippus’s Poems On Stones
Verity Platt

Modelling Space, Marking Time, Making Place: Moche Architectural Miniatures as Temporal Objects
Giles Spence Morrow

‘Something’s Driving Me to Do It’: How the Circular Miniaturisations of Felix Solomon Shape the Artist
Jack Davy

The Power of the Small in Minoan Crete: The Case of Seals
Maria Anastasiadou

navicule ac de caracis...: Miniature Ships, Shipwrecks, and Salvation in Medieval Europe
Achim Timmermann

Jake and Dinos Chapman: Hells of Their Own Making
Elizabeth Legge

In a Punctum: Miniaturizing Visions in Late-Medieval Art and Literature
Anya Burgon

Miniatures, Scale, and Grasping the Unknowable in Minoan Material Culture
Rachel Dewan

Beyond Miniatures: The Scales of Paracas and Nasca Art
Andrew Hamilton

Epilogue: Thinking through Miniatures: Reduced-Scale Objects as Tools of Cognition and World-Building
Stephanie Langin-Hooper