Bazaar to Piazza: Islamic Trade and Italian Art, 1300-1600The Mediterranean trade in luxury goods from the East made a strong and lasting impression on Italian artistic taste and production during the early Renaissance. This opulently illustrated book describes and illustrates the fascinating ways that imported art objects inspired improvements and new variety in Italian decorative arts. From Italian textiles featuring Islamic and Asian motifs to ceramics and glassware that reflected Syrian techniques and ornamental concepts, this book gives an extraordinary view of the influence of imported Oriental goods in Italy over three crucial centuries of artistic development. Rosamond Mack traces Italy's emerging decorative arts tradition as she discusses textiles, ceramics, glass, bookbinding, and metalwork; she also considers how Italian painting reflects trans-Mediterranean trade and travel. Painters represented carpets and ceramics from the East in their works, as well as textiles with bands of writing replicating or suggesting Arabic script, negotiating cultural differences in their borrowings. These paintings show how Islamic motifs were absorbed into Christian contexts. Beginning in the 1300s and 1400s, the works of Italian craftsmen inspired by luxury goods from Islamic and Asian countries gradually began to compete with those brought to Europe in huge quantities on Italian merchant ships. Yet even after their own versions surpassed the quality of some of the imported goods, Italians continued to collect, imitate, and adapt objects from the Ottoman empire and China. As Mack discusses these important influences, she provides useful summaries of the history of Renaissance decorative arts and presents a balanced and carefully researched view of the controversial topic of East-West artistic exchange. This uniquely comprehensive study offers an intriguing look at the effects of exchange in Renaissance material culture, shedding new light on the development of the Italian Renaissance as a whole. No other source provides so rich and inclusive a synthesis of the period's decorative arts. |
Contents
Trade Travel and Diplomacy | 15 |
Patterned Silks | 27 |
Oriental Script in Italian Paintings | 51 |
Carpets | 73 |
5 | 84 |
Glass | 113 |
Bookbinding and Lacquer | 125 |
The Pictorial Arts | 149 |
From Bazaar to Piazza and Back | 171 |
Notes | 181 |
Glossary | 223 |
Photographic Credits | 241 |
Common terms and phrases
Albert Museum Anatolia arabesques Arabic artistic Atil bacini bands bindings Bookbinders brassware Byzantine Cairo ceramics Chapter Chinese contemporary craftsmen Damascus decorative arts designs early eastern Mediterranean Egypt elite enameled Europe European example export fabrics fifteenth century Figure floral Florence Florentine fourteenth century Francesco Gallery of Art garments Gentile Gentile Bellini geometric gilt Giotto's Giovanni gold halos Hispano-Moresque Humanists and Bookbinders illustrations imitation inlaid inscriptions inventory Islamic Art Istanbul Italian Italian paintings Italian textiles Italy Iznik London luxury Madonna and Child maiolica Mamluk Marco Medici Mehmed Mehmed II merchants metalwork Milan Mongol mosque motifs Museo Museum of Art Muslim Oriental carpets ornament Ottoman painters Pattern Holbein Persian Pisa Pisanello Pope porcelain pottery probably pseudo-Arabic Qaitbay Raby Rachel Ward Renaissance Saint script silk sixteenth Spallanzani style Sultan surviving Syrian textiles tiraz trade Turkish velvet Venetian glass Venezia e l'Oriente Venice Victoria and Albert Wardwell weave