Biography

Daniela Wagner studied art history, archaeology, and Italian literature at the University of Hamburg. She received her M.A. in 2009, her thesis explored the “final flood” in Tintoretto’s Last Judgement in Venice. From 2011–2013 she held the Ph.D. scholarship of the City of Hamburg at the Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte in Munich, where she studied the Fifteen Signs before Doomsday in late medieval visual art for her dissertation which she finished in 2014. Before returning to Hamburg in 2014 to participate in the research project “Klang-Kontakte” commissioned by the Isa Lohmann-Siems Stiftung, Daniela worked as an editor for the “Allgemeines Künstlerlexikon” in Munich. Since 2015, she is an Assistant Professor for Art History at the University of Tübingen. Currently, she is finishing her second book / habilitation on enumerations in medieval visual art. Together with Sandra Linden (German medieval studies), she is the principal investigator of project B4 “Acting personifications as figures of aesthetic reflection in medieval literature and art” of the SFB 1391 Andere Ästhetik. She is also interested in visual representations of sound and member of the DFG-Network “Lautsphären des Mittelalters”. As a fellow at Einstein Center Chronoi, Daniela is exploring the conceptual understanding of time and its functionality in art and artifacts.

Project Abstract

Concerning time and temporality, visual art of the early and high Middle Ages was often seen as a manifestation of the binary concept of linear historical time and timeless eternity. With a closer look at artworks such as illuminated gospels, representations of processions, or liturgical artifacts, it becomes apparent that these coordinates were only the framework for a sophisticated and more diverse understanding of time. The project explores the parallelism of temporal configurations, temporality, and timelines. The aim is to grasp the multifaceted conception of time in the Middle Ages against the background of materiality and socio-political and religious culture.

As a first probe on the way to a broader investigation, the EC-C project will focus on the period before ca. 1200 and examine artifacts and acts in which questions regarding the purpose of synchronicity and asynchronicity are crucial: liturgical books with representations of the emperors who commissioned the manuscripts (such as the Gospels of Otto III. and the Pericopes of Henry II, both early 11th century) and the liturgic ritual that is making use of the iconic value of the book. While the codices present a purposeful visual synchronization of present secular time and eternity while also referring to the concept of the translatio imperii, the liturgy uses books and other objects as visual devices to temporarily produce visual information that designates and stabilizes temporary otherness in asynchronous time zones that perforate the present. Following questions regarding handling and performance, the project will also stress the significance of objects as temporal ›incubators‹ and ›storage devices‹.

Selected Publications

2021. „Die Zeit im Blick. Zur bildkünstlerischen Sichtbarmachung von Zukunft im späten Mittelalter.“ In Zukunft im Mittelalter. Zeitkonzepte und Planungsstrategien, edited by Klaus Oschema and Bernd Schneidmüller, 165–183. Konstanzer Arbeitskreis für mittelalterliche Geschichte: Vorträge und Forschungen 90. Ostfildern: Thorbecke.

2019. „Zeit und Zeitlichkeit in bildlichen Darstellungen der Fünfzehn Zeichen vor dem Jüngsten Gericht.“ In Geschichte vom Ende her denken. Endzeitentwürfe und ihre Historisierung im Mittelalter, edited by Susanne Ehrich and Andrea Worm, 361–376. Forum Mittelalter Studien 15. Regensburg: Schnell & Steiner.

2018. „Konfigurationen der Wahrnehmung. Die Prozession als Stifter narrativer Ambivalenz in den Wundern des Wahren Kreuzes der Scuola Grande di San Giovanni Evangelista.“ In Rahmen und frames. Dispositionen des Visuellen in der Kunst der Vormoderne, edited by Daniela Wagner and Fridericke Conrad, 129–144. Hamburger Forschungen zur Kunstgeschichte XI. Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter.

2016. Die Fünfzehn Zeichen vor dem Jüngsten Gericht. Spätmittelalterliche Bildkonzepte für das Seelenheil. Berlin: Reimer.

2015. „Gegenwart und Zukunft. Die Endzeit und ihre Zuschauer in den Fünfzehn Zeichen vor dem Jüngsten Gericht.“ In The Public in the Picture: Involving the Beholder in Antique, Islamic, Byzantine, Western Medieval and Renaissance Art, edited by Beate Fricke and Urte Krass, 171–188. Berlin, Zürich: Diaphanes.