The Lumière Lyon 2 University implements mediation actions for the PRC and JCJC 2021 research projects in consultation with their respective coordinators and according to the programming of the University’s Science and Society staff division. These mediation actions open to non-academic audiences can take the form of comic strips, articles, video capsules, workshops for events. They will be evaluated internally.

One of the best-known components of the vast heritage passed on by the Middle Ages to Western European culture is Arthurian Literature. Strangely, Arthurian heraldry, a specific field within Arthurian Studies, still presents many unresolved questions. Our project aims at filling this scientific gap and providing the first full-scale study on this domain, illustrating the creation, diffusion and reception of Arthurian heraldry, both in literary and artistic terms. The research will examine Arthurian heraldry from its beginnings in the 13th century through the 17th century, following its three channels: 1) Texts where the shields are described. 2) Manuscripts illustrations in which painters depicted recognizable coats of arms. 3) Rolls of arms (i.e. collections of coats of arms) representing the shields of the knights. These subjects will be addressed through synergistic research based on an interdisciplinary approach, combining contributions from history, literature, heraldry, philology, art history, history of the book. The project will provide for the first time a collection of all the available data, including an inventory of the heraldic manuscripts and prints, as well as a survey of the heraldic depictions. We will propose a new interpretation of the emergence of Arthurian heraldry, in which we will showcase the importance of Jacques d’Armagnac (1437-1477), powerful lord of the French Midi, an aspect that to date has not been properly brought to light. The diffusion and the reception of Arthurian heraldry will be examined through an analytical approach which will enable us to identify the different and sometimes enigmatic forms in which the roll of arms and the depictions manifested themselves. The ideological dimension of the phenomenon will be elucidated through a reappraisal of its origins as well as through fresh analysis of the cultural practices related to the ownership of heraldic books (manuscript and print).

“Intoxicated by turpentine.” When Marcel Duchamp so described the painters of his time, the avant-garde artist was not only criticizing a traditional way of thinking about the materiality of art, he was also modernizing a commonplace of medical discourse as well as a recurring and significant motif in the French commentary on the arts. Investigating historically the stereotype of “the smell of paint,” this research project seeks to underscore the important role of olfaction in the material history of art and in the historical conceptions of the art of painting in France from the mid-18th century to the first half of 20th. At the crossroads of art history and history of the sciences, this research will describe how medical concerns about the smell of paint significantly influenced the making and the composition of colors as well as the size and organization of the painter’s studio, consequently affecting the social status of the artist and, ultimately, the critical discourse on art, which often used the smell of a painting in metaphors expressing an aesthetical judgment. Thus, from the creation of a painting to its reception, the frequent references to the smell of paint unveil a hidden aspect of the history of art that will be illuminated through this analysis of a variety of historical sources, including, in particular, medical works, technical treatises on painting, industrial archives, art criticism, satirical drawings, etc. Finally, this historical research on the smell of a painting will be applied to the creation of a pedagogical tool aimed at the museum-going public. It will present the historical evolution of the painter’s studio through the smells of the painter’s materials. This sensory experience of the materiality of painting aims to embody art history, providing museum visitors with an alternative to the digital approach to works of art.