European Art and the Wider World 13501550

(Paperback)

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Inspired by recent approaches to the field, the book reexamines the field of Renaissance art history by exploring the art of this era in the light of global connections. It considers the movement of objects, ideas and technologies and its significance for European art and material culture, analysing images through the lens of cultural encounter and conflict. -- .

Reviews

This book offers important new insights into the history of Renaissance arts by rethinking key objects and themes through the lens of cross-culturality. Its contribution is especially welcome as it demonstrates how exactly the idea of the Renaissance was formed by its global contacts and through acculturation of arts and ideas from beyond Europe.
Sussan Babaie, Andrew W. Mellon Reader in the Arts of Iran and Islam, The Courtauld Institute of Art

'Art history has become increasingly engaged with global connections, but to date no study has filled the need for a synthetic overview of the early modern period. We can never again see the 'Renaissance' in the same, isolated way after reading these chapters.
Larry Silver, Farquhar Professor of Art History, University of Pennsylvania

Bringing together essays synthesizing recent scholarship on Renaissance art and material culture, Christian and Clark (both, Open Univ., UK) have created the first undergraduate-level treatment of the global nature of Renaissance art. The editors' goal is to illuminate commonalities between Europe and non-Western, non-Christian cultures. Two of the essays, Christian's on Renaissance altarpieces and Clark's on European collections of non-Western objects, consider indirect influences on art that came from luxury goods traded into Europe. The other two essaysone on art and architecture of Islamic, Jewish, and Christian inhabitants of Spain, and of Amer-Indians of the New World, the other on Venice as a palimpsest of Italian, Byzantine, and Islamic art and cultureare particularly successful in revealing direct connections between different cultures and the hybrid art that developed from close proximity.
J. B. Gregory, formerly, Delaware College of Art and Design, CHOICE, Vol. 56, No. 2 (October 2018)

This welcome volume is a textbook, and a very good one. It is first in a series of four titled Art and Its Global Histories that surveys the manifold cross-cultural influences between Western Europe and the world from the Pax Mongolica to postmodernism, supplemented by an anthology of seminal essays and primary sources for the entire period. The full series offers a suite of much-needed pedagogical materials for teaching early modern and modern art history from an inclusive, global-studies perspective [] Clear and comprehensive, it is written in a serious but lively style, appropriately theoretical without becoming abstruse or jargon ridden. The introduction and essays read like particularly pithy and eloquent class lectures, and the bibliographies following each chapter are worth the price of admission, with thorough and up-to-date coverage that provides a solid starting point for both student and scholarly researchers.
James M. Saslow, Renaissance Quarterly, Vol. 71, No. 4 (Winter 2018)

Author Bio

Kathleen Christian is Senior Lecturer in Art History at The Open University

Leah Clark is Lecturer in Art History at The Open University