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This series of lectures explores the idea of the agency and creativity of a sometimes personified "Nature" in late medieval and early modern Europe. Often seeming to operate with surprising independence from the Christian God, Nature was understood as both a creator of artists and a powerful generator of images that served as inspiration to those same artists. The series of lectures traces a set of ideas that shaped the work of artists and art theorists, scientists and theologians in both northern and southern Europe, looking especially closely at the problem of "figured stones": stones (some fossils, some not) that seemed to bear mysterious images "made by Nature." The lectures (View Full Event Description Here: https://art.unc.edu/event/bettie-allison-rand-lectures-in-art-history-rebecca-zorach-northwestern-university/2021-03-22/)
