Slade Lectures 2025

Focusing on this notion of gaps in the constitution of cultural heritage, the first lecture pursues the traces of loot and objects of war. Close readings of illustrations in fifteenth-century military manuals, of drawings in the Bernese chronicle of Diebold Schilling (1478-1483) and of drawings and prints by the mercenary soldier Urs Graf uncover important aspects of the transformation of booty into cultural heritage. The traces of the history of two pairs of looted canons from the 15th and 16th centuries are riddled with gaps. Following these blank spots reveals, however, how these objects and their fragmented histories may be understood as contributing to the pre-history of museums and their collections in Switzerland.