Objects and Spaces of Encounter in Renaissance Italy

文艺复兴时期意大利相遇的物体和空间

• 批准号: AH/X007065/1
• 负责人: Mary Laven
• 金额: $ 102.49万
• 依托单位: University of Cambridge
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Research Grant
• 财政年份: 2023
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2023 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=AH%2FX007065%2F1
• 关键词: Objects; Spaces; Encounter; Renaissance; Italy

This project for the first time places foreigners, migrants and minority groups at the centre of the long Renaissance in Italy. It explores the complex ties and interdependencies supporting cultural production in this period, unsettling long-held assumptions about what was 'Italian' about the 'Italian Renaissance'. Moving beyond the study of specific minorities (e.g. Jews, Greeks, Black Africans), it investigates the fundamental diversity and connectedness of Italian society and culture. Our research holds that every aspect of the Italian Renaissance resulted from an encounter, and that within each encounter, every actor possessed a varying level of 'belonging' and conversely of 'extraneity' (Cerutti, 2012). This conceptual model allows us, first, to recognize the contribution of foreigners, migrants, and minority groups to Renaissance cultural production; second, to identify these contributions as fundamental to the social fabric of Italy, where 'the diversity of urban populations was hard-wired into the lives of whole regions' (Rubin, 2020); and third, to integrate those contributions into wider patterns of cultural exchange and production across the peninsula.We focus on objects and spaces which reveal the influence of foreign actors, materials, designs and production techniques on the culture of the Renaissance. Objects (such as Turkish rugs, German bedclothes or garments made of 'damask' or 'scotch tweed'), contextualised using archival, textual and visual sources, evoke material exchanges, sociability, and the layering of real and imagined interactions. Spaces of encounter (workshops, inns, fairs, churches) frame the human and material contacts underpinning the Renaissance and allow us to assess levels of extraneity and belonging, as they varied by circumstance and place.Our project guards against the conventional skewing of Italian history towards Venice, Florence and Rome with fresh research on less-studied coastal and frontier regions of southern, central and northern Italy. The timeframe, 1450-1650, covers a period of exceptional mobility, resulting from the persecution of Jews and Muslims in the Spanish kingdoms, the slave trade, the Reformations, religious wars and shifting European-Ottoman relations. We expect this new history of the Renaissance to be unfamiliar, unsettling and uncomfortable. It engages with structures of inequality and discrimination inherent to Renaissance Italy while teasing out the potential for intercultural collaboration and innovation within that hostile, prejudiced world. By revealing the creative consequences of migration and multiculturalism, we challenge one of the key myths of 'western civilization'.Our work thus presents a new critical approach to the Italian Renaissance. The field, long defined as the study of the intellectual and artistic output of humanist scholars and elite artists, has faced recent accusations of irrelevance and narrow elitism. We argue, by contrast, that the astonishing cultural production of the period was neither narrow nor elite, but germinated in its very encounters and interdependence with richly diverse networks of minority groups.The project is timely. It answers a pressing need to demonstrate the diversity and connectedness of pre-modern communities and to recast European history in the light of Brexit, BLM, and the decolonization of the curriculum. It also deploys innovative historical methods to challenge old assumptions about national identity and the nature of creativity. In a famed costume book of 1590, Cesare Vecellio attributed the dazzling array of clothes in Italy to its defining mix of peoples: 'For this reason, it is no wonder that we can see a greater diversity of dress here than in any other major nation or region.' By studying the fecundity of encounters, we aspire to paint an alternative picture of the Renaissance in Italy, enriched by minorities, migrants and outsiders.

该项目首次将外国人，移民和少数群体置于意大利漫长复兴的中心。它探讨了在此期间支持文化生产的复杂关系和相互依存关系，对“意大利文艺复兴时期”的“意大利语”的长期假设令人不安。它超越了对特定少数民族（例如犹太人，希腊人，黑人非洲人）的研究，它研究了意大利社会和文化的基本多样性和联系。我们的研究认为，意大利文艺复兴时期的各个方面都是由于一次相遇而产生的，在每次遭遇中，每个演员都拥有不同水平的“归属”，相反的“归属感”（Cerutti，2012年）。这种概念模型首先使我们能够认识到外国人，移民和少数群体对文艺复兴文化生产的贡献。其次，将这些贡献确定为意大利社会结构的基础，在那里“城市人口的多样性都与整个地区的生活相连”（鲁宾，2020年）；第三，将这些贡献纳入整个半岛的更广泛的文化交流和生产模式。我们专注于揭示外国参与者，材料，设计和生产技术对文艺复兴文化的影响的物体和空间。物体（例如土耳其地毯，德国的床罩或由“ damask”或“ Scotch Tweed”制成的服装），使用档案，文本和视觉来源，唤起材料交流，社交性以及真实和想象中的互动的层次。遭遇（车间，旅馆，博览会，教堂）的境界构成了人类和物质的接触，这是文艺复兴时期的基础和物质接触，并让我们能够根据情况和地点进行评估，因为它们会因环境和地点而变化。我们的项目卫队反对在佛罗伦萨，佛罗伦萨，佛罗伦萨，佛罗伦萨，弗洛伦斯，对北部地区的新鲜沿海地区和南方地区和南方地区的新鲜研究，反对意大利历史的偏向于南方和南方地区。时间范围为1450 - 1650年，涵盖了一段特殊的流动性，这是由于犹太人和穆斯林在西班牙王国，奴隶贸易，宗教改革，宗教战争以及改变欧洲与奥特曼的关系的迫害。我们希望这一新的文艺复兴历史将不熟悉，不安和不舒服。它参与了意大利文艺复兴时期固有的不平等和歧视结构，同时取消了在那个敌对，有偏见的世界内进行跨文化合作和创新的潜力。通过揭示移民和多元文化主义的创造性后果，我们挑战了“西方文明”的关键神话之一。我们的工作为意大利文艺复兴时期提供了一种新的关键方法。长期以来，该领域被定义为对人文主义学者和精英艺术家的知识和艺术成果的研究，最近面临着无关紧要和狭窄的精英主义的指控。相比之下，我们认为，这个时期的惊人文化生产既不是狭窄也不是精英的，而是在与少数群体的丰富网络相互依存的情况下发芽。该项目是及时的。它回答了迫切的需求，以证明前现代社区的多样性和联系，并根据英国退欧，BLM和课程非殖民化重新播放欧洲历史。它还部署了创新的历史方法，以挑战有关民族认同和创造力本质的旧假设。 Cesare Vecellio在一本著名的服装书中，将意大利令人眼花the乱的衣服归因于其定义的人民：“出于这个原因，也就不足为奇的是，我们可以看到这里的衣服多样性比任何其他主要国家或地区都要多。”通过研究遭遇的繁殖力，我们渴望为意大利文艺复兴时期的替代图片，并由少数民族，移民和局外人富含。