Artistic exchanges across Afro-Eurasia : a global taste for metal artifacts from Mamluk Syria and Egypt in Italy, West Africa, and China in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries

Abstract

Much is to be learned from the ongoing and invigorating dialogue among art historical subdisciplines as well as archaeology and anthropology. This article therefore focuses on artistic responses in different regions to imported artifacts, revealing the vital relevance of transmedial and transmaterial dynamics in the premodern period. Examination of the movements in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries of a group of metal objects from Mamluk Syria and Egypt to regions as far-flung as Italy, West Africa, and China sheds light on transcultural dynamics, networks, and processes of exchange. It questions the Eurocentric perspective that persists in art history even in the context of a global purview, hence contributing to current attempts to upend traditional notions of centers and peripheries. It thus illuminates notions of connectivity, transcultural interactions, and complex entanglements in long and short-distance artistic relationships across Afro-Eurasia in the Late Middle Ages.