Premiere presentation of costumes reconstructed from Faras paintings
04 10 2024
In the near future, in mid-October 2024, there will be promotional events at the Louvre and the Sorbonne University in Paris promoting the research carried out by the team from the UW Faculty of Archeology.
The presented results of the project “Kreacje władzy. Obraz rodziny królewskiej i kleru w średniowiecznej Nubii” concerns the reconstruction of costumes based on paintings from Faras from the collection of the National Museum in Warsaw and the Sudanese National Museum in Khartoum. The event will begin with a popularisation session at Sorbonne University on 15 October 2024. The organisers also invite the public to a costume show on 17 October at the Louvre Museum (as part of the regular programme “Midis de l’archéologie!”).
Due to the very small number of written sources, the study of medieval Nubia is extremely difficult, and the primary sources of knowledge for researchers of this region are archaeological and iconographic data. In the archaeological-historical part of the project, Dr Magdalena Woźniak-Eusèbe (Polish Centre of Mediterranean Archaeology) and Dr Dobrochna Zielińska (Faculty of Archeology) investigated how Christianity, the new faith that came to Nubia from Constantinople in the sixth century, influenced the form of official dress of rulers and religious leaders. Just as today, robes and decorative elements of dress were part of a non-verbal system of communication in which each element has its own meaning. Monumental images of representatives of the court and the clergy were an important element in the decoration of Nubian churches, intended to influence the faithful and show them the relationship between kingdom and church and the divine basis of power. The study of costumes has shown what a rich source of knowledge wall paintings can be.
In order to realise the material aspect of the costumes, to understand their construction, volume and weight, an important element of the project was to recreate the five complete silhouettes shown in the paintings that once adorned the walls of Faras Cathedral. The reconstructed costumes were presented on models to fully visualise their physical form and their impact on viewers. The models were Sudanese, community representatives from the Netherlands and Germany, playing the role of dignitaries. They were also photographed in the church of Pastor van Ars in The Hague.
The project “Kreacje władzy. Obraz rodziny królewskiej i kleru w średniowiecznej Nubii” is a unique example of transdisciplinary academic collaboration that not only produces new knowledge and popularises it, but also shows that artefacts and phenomena of the past can have a contemporary face.
Popularisation activities in Paris received funding in the 5th edition of the competition under Action III.3.2 “Promotion of scientific research in the public domain”.
