Plunder of war or objects of trade? The reuse and reception of Andalusi objects in medieval Pisa

Mapping, Materiality, and Merchant Culture in Medieval Italy (12th-14th Century)

“…Recent art historical scholarship has begun to address the tangible connections between artistic production and mercantile endeavors, and the artistic commissions of the maritime republics of Italy have provided fruitful ground for this type of study (Mack 2002;Jardine and Brotton 2000;Howard 2000;Caskey 2004;Mathews 2012;Mathews 2014). The wealth of these republics was based predominantly on international trade in the Mediterranean and the large expenditures by wealthy merchants in these cities on art and architecture raise the questions of how a distinct merchant culture determined a particular aesthetic or approach to artistic production and how this mentality was manifested in the artworks themselves.…”

Durendal, translated: Islamic object genealogies in the chansons de geste

“…Recent studies of the use of spolia in medieval contexts suggest a cultural layering in which past cultural objects retain their meaning and specificity in a recontextualized present space, lending their cultural weight to the 'cumulative' meaning of the art work (Forsyth, 1995;Matthews, 2012;Ch'ien, 2016). Ilene Forsyth, for instance, has argued that tenth-century Ottonian art using concrete remains from highly diverse periods -ancient Roman, early Christian, Byzantine, Fatimid, Frankish, Anglo-Saxon, Merovingian, Carolingian, and early Ottonian -conveys a view of history that is 'Christian but cumulative, in the sense that earlier cultures, both pagan and Christian are subsumed within it' (Forsyth, 1995, 153).…”