Beatrice Blümer M. A.
Contact
beatrice.bluemer@gmail.com
2021–2026 Doctoral candidate, Advidor: Prof. Dr. Ingrid Baumgärtner
2025 DAAD scholarship holder at the German Forum for Art History and John Brian Harley Fellow for the History of Cartography
2024 Doctoral position at the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florence
2023 Scholarship holder at the German Study Center in Venice
2022 Scholarship holder at the German Historical Institute in Rome and the German Historical Institute in London
2021 Doctoral position at the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florence
2019–2021 Team leader of visitor services at the Museum for Sepulchral Culture
2018–2021 master’s degree in history and public Relations at the University of Kassel; graduated with a master's thesis entitled “Aegean Islands and Constantinople in Text and Image. Cristoforo Buondelmonti's Liber Insularum Archipelagi”
2019 Study course at the German Historical Institute in Rome
2018–2019 Tutor in medieval history at the University of Kassel
2018 Intern at the German Historical Institute in Rome
2018 Student assistant in the Department of Social Sciences at the University of Kassel
2016–2018 Studied History, Archaeology, and Art History at the University of Hamburg
2013–2016 bachelor’s degree in history and art history at the University of Kassel; Graduated with a bachelor's thesis entitled “Hannibal's crossing of the Alps in modern reception – a source-critical comparison between Polybius and Livy on 19th-century illustrations”
2016 Intern at the Schlossmuseum Wilhelmshöhe, Antiquities Collection
2015–2016 Studied at the Università degli Studi Roma Tre
Manuscript traditions
Mediterranean
Text-image relations
Culture of knowledge
Iconic turn
History of reception
The Liber insularum Archipelagi, a knowledge compendium by Cristoforo Buondelmonti, established the genre known as isolarii and sparked cartographic interest in the world of the Aegean islands. The present doctoral project takes this work, created in 1418, and the variations produced up to 1642 as an opportunity to examine the cultural models of thought that it reflects, against the background of the underlying culture of knowledge and the constantly changing geopolitical positions in the Mediterranean region. This is based on a conceptual text-image analysis of the 65 Latin versions of the work. The dissertation explores the transmission of knowledge in text and image to identify the lines of tradition of the individual copies. Conclusively, new interpretative approaches will be developed to shed light on the manuscript copying tradition of the late Middle Ages and the emergence of the culture of knowledge within the Mediterranean region.
2024: Review of Susanne Ehrich/Jörg Oberste (eds.), Herrscher in der Metropole. Spannungsfelder zwischen politischer Zentralität und urbaner Diversität in der Vormoderne, Regensburg (Schnell & Steiner) 2023 (Forum Mittelalter. Studien 20), 312 pages, ISBN 978-3-7954-3812-8; in: QFIAB 104/1 (2024), pp. 636-637.
2023: Blog-Entry of the German Historical Institute in Paris: https://dhip.hypotheses.org/3500 “The manuscript tradition of the Liber insularum Archipelagi”
2023: Blog-Entry from the German Historical Institute in London: https://ghil.hypotheses.org/1559 “Studia humanitatis in Text and Image: the Liber insularum Archipelagi by Cristoforo Buondelmonti”
2023: “Appropriation through Time and Space. Mapping the Archipelago in the Liber insularum Archipelagi” in: Objektzeiten. Antike Artefakte und historische Zeitvorstellungen in transepochaler Perspektive, ed. by Mirjam Hähnle and Julian Zimmermann, Baden Baden 2023, pp. 77-111.
2023: “The Liber insularum Archipelagi by Cristoforo Buondelmonti: Copyists as Co-Creators in the Isolarii Mapping Tradition” in: Imago Mundi 74/2 (2023), https://doi.org/10.1080/03085694.2022.2130604
2018: Conference report of the Cartographic History Colloquium May 11–12, 2018, H-Soz-Kult, August 24, 2018: www.hsozkult.de/conferencereport/id/tagungsberichte-7831
07/2026: International Medieval Congress in Leeds, Session: Presentologies. Using Time in the Medieval Worlds: “Mapping the past, present, and future: A reflection on cartographic temporalities and political power”
02/2026: Renaissance Society of America, San Francisco, Panel: Manipulations. The practice of retouching, repurposing, and reframing objects in early modern collecting: “Reworking authorship: Alteration, authenticity, and the afterlives of premodern island books”
05/2025: Conference „Das Artefakt im Fokus – Mediävistische Wissensgeschichte in der in-terdisziplinären Praxis“, together with Dr. Gion Wallmeyer: „Das Wissen der Welt verbildlicht: Praxeologische Zugänge zur mittelalterlichen Kartographie“
03/2025: Renaissance Society of America, Boston, with Dr. Jacob Eisensmith Organizers of the Panel: Outsiders in Venice
01/2025: Sorbonne Université in Paris: “New insights into the Liber insularum by Cristoforo Buondelmonti: Antiquity, cultural geography and heritage”
12/2024: Warburg Institute in London: „Copying or Creating? Notions of Ingenuity in Island Books”
12/2024: Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz, Department Gerhard Wolf: “Towards a Study of Heritage: Cultural and Natural Sites in the Liber insularum Archipelagi”
08/2024: Macalester College, Saint Paul, US: “Art and Empire: Artistic Exchange in Early Modern Empires“
07/2024: International Conference on the History of Cartography, Université Jean Moulin Lyon III: “Layers of the Liber insularum Archipelagi: Rereading its Latin Past”
05/2024: International Congress on Medieval Studies in Kalamazoo, US, Panel: Sites of Tension (2): Islands and Interconnectivity: “Between Past and Present: Changing Perceptions of the Aegean Region in Medieval Island Books”
03/2024: Renaissance Society of America, Chicago, US, Panel: Landscaping and Cityscaping: Representation, Personification, and Construction of Places in Early Modern Literature (15th-18th century): “Constantinople between Past and Present: The Reshaping of a City in a Humanistic Travel Book”
01/2024: University of Münster, Institute for Byzantine Studies: „Alle Wege führen nach Konstantinopel? Byzantinisch-osmanische Beziehungen in Buondelmontis Liber insularum”
10/2023: Ca’Foscari – University of Venice, Conference: Paving the Way to the Rediscovery of Ancient Greece: “Cristoforo Buondelmonti and Other Travellers:: “Islands in Time. The Copying Tradition of Buondelmonti’s isolario”
10/2023: German Historical Institute in London & German Historical Institute in Washington, DC, Medieval History Seminar: “…enarrationis et picturae libellum: Multimedia Knowledge in a Medieval Travel Account”
09/2023: German Historical Institute in Paris & German Historical Institute in Rome, Online-Seminar: Euro-Mediterranean Entanglements in Medieval History: „Processes of a Mediterranean Exchange. The Liber insularum Archipelagi and its Humanistic Circulation“
08/2023: German Center for Venetian Studies in Venice: “Kopiertradition von Inselbüchern. Eine neue Perspektive“
07/2023: International Medieval Congress in Leeds, Session Mappings IV: “Nascent Nissology: Mapping the Self in the Liber insularum Archipelagi by Cristoforo Buondelmonti”
03/2023: University of Hamburg, University of Arts Berlin & Villa I Tatti – The Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies in Florence, Workshop: Script–Image–Language in Early Modern Humanism: “Humanistic Thinking Spaces in a Manuscript: The material and visual Reception of the Liber insularum Archipelagi”
12/2022: German Historical Institute in London: „Der Liber insularum Archipelagi von Cristoforo Buondelmonti”
11/2022: University of Oxford, Seminar Series on Dante Studies: “Botticelli’s Dante: The Commedia between Text and Image in late-fifteenth century Florence”
09/2022: Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz: “The Mapping of a Text: The Liber insularum Archipelagi by Cristoforo Buondelmonti”
07/2022: International Medieval Congress in Leeds, Session 1515: “Religio-Political Frontiers in Cristoforo Buondelmonti’s Liber insularum Archipelagi”
06/2022: Cartographic Colloquium: “Strategien einer maritimen Expansion? Der Liber insularum Archipelagi zwischen wissenskultureller und geopolitischer Aneignung“
04/2022: German Historical Institute in Rome: „Zwischen Observation und Kreation. Ortsdarstellungen im Liber insularum Archipelagi von Cristoforo Buondelmonti“
11/2021: Bibliotheca Hertziana & German Historical Institute in Rome, Workshop: Neue Tendenzen der Italienforschung zu Mittelalter und Renaissance: “Cum portu tutissimo a ianuensibus sublimatur. Die Insel Chios im Liber insularum Archipelagi von Cristoforo Buondelmonti“
09/2021: Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz, Labor: “A cartography of Power? Maps in the Liber insularum Archipelagi by Cristoforo Buondelmonti”
07/2021: Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz: “Epistemic Power Structures and the Transfer of Knowledge in Cristoforo Buondelmonti’s Liber insularum Archipelagi”
05/2021: Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz, KHI Lecture 2021+ Series, Introduction of Alexander Marr: “Landscape, Ambiguity and Misogynist Aesthetics”