Trading Opulence: New Directions in the Study of Byzantine Luxury Goods for Western Markets (10th - 16th centuries)

Objective

By focusing on an undervalued field of research, the proposed project will explore, within an interdisciplinary framework, the relationship between the luxury art markets on the two shores of the Mediterranean Sea. A series of high-status artefacts, inscribed in Latin (at times in other languages, too), but produced in the Byzantine East, provides the source material for the project, which will focus both on the artistic exchanges and on the processes of production and distribution of works of art. The purpose is to study these processes by simultaneously focusing on the issues of manufacturing methods, patronage, iconography, and epigraphic habits, with a special attention being paid to the choice of scripts and languages on inscribed artefacts. The chronological coverage will span the 10th century (the first testimonies to the presence of the Amalfitan community in Constantinople) and 1571 (the conquest of Cyprus by the Ottomans). One of the project’s broader objectives is to move beyond the study of single ethno-linguistic narratives, and to determine the significance of cross-cultural artistic interaction for the development of a Mediterranean economic system and of cultural diffusion and integration in medieval Europe.