This talk focuses on an interconnected group of images and objects ranging from Central African raffia weavings to carpets from Asia Minor and Italian, Spanish and Portuguese Renaissance paintings, as well as on the trajectories of their multi-layered entanglements through the centuries up to the present. It will illustrate the need to consider these images and objects together in order to gain new insights about complex intersections between images and objects across time and space in the early modern period. It will also further illuminate the necessity to provincialize Europe and Italy within the discipline of art history, and to overcome traditional notions of centre and periphery. The talk will propose new ways to move beyond common East-West stereotypes and paradigms. By tracing and interrogating the intersected dynamics of this group of images and objects, it will shed light on image-object-interrelations beyond the boundaries of traditional categories such as Islamic, European, and African art histories. It will show what is to be gained from a wider perspective beyond ‘fine art’ versus ‘decorative art’ hierarchies. And, by taking a fresh look at the images and objects themselves, at their multiple interrelations across media, materials, and geographical areas, and at the repercussions of their entanglements, the talk will highlight transcultural dynamics and issues of connectivity and resistance that will take us – quite literally – across the globe from the early modern period up to the present.

Vera-Simone Schulz, art historian and postdoctoral research associate at the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz – Max-Planck-Institut