OK -- this video focuses on the global renaissance -- so thinking about how the Italians -- the Renaissance
Italians were interacting and thinking about other cultures especially after 1492 after this
period of contact begins between Europe and the Americas. So we'll definitely keep that in mind.
Some of the themes here build on the themes from the Venice videos, so the videos about
Venice and how it was such an international city during the Renaissance. There were a lot
of things going on in terms of trade, mercantile exchange, definitely looking towards the east
a lot of connections to Constantinople or to Istanbul -- you know, in the late
15th into 16th century becomes Istanbul. So those are some of the things we'll be thinking about
in this particular video. The two details that I show you here are a detail from a painting of a
Chinese porcelain cup holding gold. So this idea of an interest in porcelain that's coming from China
and then also you see a representation of what may be Native Americans shortly after Columbus's first
voyage to the Americas so this may be the earliest representation of Native Americans
in Europe. So we'll look at that image as well. Very quickly I just wanted to remind you of what
we talked about in one of the Venice videos when we were looking at the work of Vittore Carpaccio.
Vittore Carpaccio is very much known as a narrative painter, a painter of Venetian life,
and so in his painting, "Two Ladies on an Altana above a Hunt" -- that painting that has been
cut in half with one portion in the Getty Museum and one portion in vVnice at the Museo
Correr. In this particular work, you do see Black Africans as gondoliers and so it is noteworthy to
see these figures here and here. And so in the larger work, you can see them here and here.
So this is the detail. And so this was one of the very few professions that was open
to Black Africans in Venice. And so it was really a profession that they were able to to take or to
find employment in in Venice. And so in this particular case, you could see these two black
gondoliers, the idea that sub-Saharan Africans would often come to Italy enslaved. So a very
unfortunate history of course a history of slavery, but very often they would be freed by the end of
their lives. And then if they were free, they were able to find employment but employment was very
restricted to them. They definitely didn't have access to all different types of jobs
and so one of the few jobs, as I said, that was open to them was being a gondolier and so you
do see them represented in some of Carpaccio's narrative scenes. And this is one of those examples.
In terms of representing Black sub-Saharan Africans or representations of Black africans
we also see the representation of Balthazar in "The Adoration of the Magi" painting. So
these paintings, where you have the three Magi coming to adore Christ shortly after his birth --
this idea of kings or priests or sometimes associated with magic or wise men --
these three men who come to adore christ and offer three gifts: gold, frankincense, and myrrh. And so
you see these three figures including Balthazar here adorned with gems, wearing a turban; all three
are wearing very elaborate garments, beautiful colors, some indications of furs and animal skins.
And so you see this offering of the gifts: so Chinese porcelain here or at least trying to
make it look like Chinese porcelain, possibly a jasper vessel here, alabaster vessel perhaps here
although there is some debate as to what the exact materials are but really representing this
idea of global outreach or global kind of power perhaps or global appreciation of the Christ child.
But also Mantegna is showing his understanding of different materials and the types of things he
may have seen in the Gonzaga collection in Mantua because remember he worked for the Gonzaga family
in in the court in Mantua, and so he may have had access to materials that looked
like this such as seeing things like turbans, different types of vessels, possibly porcelain
and so it's important to keep that in mind. And he really is making an effort to make this look
accurate in terms of looking at these different cultures and these different cultural objects.
Around this time it was very traditional to show the three kings as different ages and from
different places and of different backgrounds and so Balthazar is generally represented
as a Black African and so you see him in this other representation from a French Book of hours
that dates to roughly the same time in about the 1490s if we zoom in on Caspar here on this oldest
of the wise men. You see him wearing a ring, again kind of this lovely display
of different textures and materials and, of course, he's holding this porcelain cup.
Porcelain is known for being fired at very high temperatures. It has very thin walls. It is used --
it uses a very refined white clay called kaolin clay. And so in Italy they didn't have access to
that kind of very refined clay, while there were lots of quantities of that refined clay in China.
And they also didn't have kilns that fired at the very high temperature that the Chinese kilns fired
the ceramics and so -- or the porcelain -- and so they were unable to create porcelain
for hundreds of years after this painting was created. But that definitely didn't prevent them
from collecting porcelain or being interested in porcelain or representing it in paintings.
Another work that shows this interest in other cultures if we go to Rome is a work by Pinturicchio.
Pinturicchio created a number of fresco paintings, paintings in Rome. And one of his larger projects
was to decorate the Borgia apartments, so the pope Alexander Vi was the Borgia pope --
a very famous, very controversial pope -- a lot of history about the Borgias.
These apartments are now open so if you do go to the Vatican to visit. They were closed for a
very long time, but now you can see them and this particular image is one of a series that has been
recently cleaned and conserved and really brought back to its original or a lot of its original
color so you really get a sense of that bright vivid quality that Pinturicchio originally intended.
So what we're seeing here is an image of the Resurrection we see Christ emerging from the
tomb in a mandorla -- so kind of this large almond shaped halo -- surrounded by angels and being adored
and the guards seemed to be overwhelmed and then you have a very calm representation of Alexander
VI, the Borgia pope, who is praying up at the to the resurrected christ, so a very devout image
of the Borgia pope of Alexander VI. Let's zoom in a little. Oh yeah, you can just see before
cleaning there. We can zoom in again so you can see again there's the pope here --
wonderful colors, but if we zoom in, in between here this kind of red cloth and the head of the
man, whose foreshortened head is gazing upwards, we can see this kind of group of individuals who
are naked and possibly have feather headdresses. And so some individuals have suggested -- or some
scholars -- have suggested that this is in fact the earliest representation of
that this is the earliest representation of Native Americans. And so it's possible. There are
accounts from Columbus's voyage of nude individuals that they saw whose bodies were painted and we do
know that Alexander VI -- that Pope Alexander VI was very interested in what was going on in the
"New World" that he was involved in a treatise that divided up the the territories between
Spain and Portugal. We also know, of course, that he was from Spain originally, so he had Spanish roots.
He was seen as kind of an outsider in Italy because of these Spanish roots.
And so this idea that he would have been very interested in these new discoveries and that
he was very interested in kind of how they were divvied up and who got control of these new lands.
And many people have said this this even has kind of a sad meaning to it because, of course, it
is the the Europeans who will go to the americas and essentially wipe out a lot of the indigenous
populations and so there's unfortunately this kind of foreshadowing of negative things to come if
indeed this is supposed to be representations of Native Americans in the background.
Thinking about other types of representation, the type of representation of Christ that one might
see in the "New World" where you see a really interesting combination between influences
of like indigenous Mexican influences and then also influences coming from Europe so kind of this
combination of what was already in existence in Mexico -- what will become New Spain -- and then also
what's coming in from Europe. So in this particular case, we're seeing a very European subject. We're
seeing the subject of the Mass of Saint Gregory, which tells the story of a pope who's later named
a saint who, while he's in mass, essentially he has a vision of Christ as he's on the altar
and this is where he really gets a vision of the fact that the Eucharist that is the blood --
or the the bread and the wine literally become the body and blood of Christ in the process of
the mass in terms of the liturgy and when it is blessed. This idea of transubstantiation. That it
literally transforms, and this was something that was very important in terms of Catholic belief. And
so in this particular case, you see Saint Gregory here. You see the mass taking place, and then you
see that vision of Christ on the altar as well as all these instruments of the Passion of Christ. The
passion being his crucifixion of course. So things like the column, the nails, the money bag of Judas.
You can see the sponge and the spear -- so all of these reminders of the pain and suffering that
Christ went through. It's also a very bloody image connecting to this idea of the blood and the body
of Christ, but also this idea that if we look back into previous Mexica or Aztec rituals, we
see the use of blood in some of those rituals. So perhaps this was something to help with conversion.
So what makes this European is the subject, right? So this story of Christ -- this Christian subject
that's being brought from Europe, and in fact, it it's even based on a European print. We can see the
comparison there, but obviously there's some key differences in the style. If we zoom in, you can see
how a lot of the materials are kind of floating in the background. This was much more typical of Aztec
or Mexica type of design and style because it was likely that indigenous artists worked on this
particular piece. You can also see that in terms of its materials, it's made of luminous feathers,
and so featherwork was very common among Aztec and Mexica or Aztec or Mexica. So Mexica
is the kind of preferred term, and but we generally call them Aztec today. And so this
featherwork really brought this idea of a spirituality -- kind of an other worldliness -- and
these feathers were very important to the Mexica. So you can see for example this reproduction of an
Aztec feather crown or headdress that's sometimes referred to as the headdress of Moctezuma.
And so the original dates to the 16th century, and the original is now in Vienna and was taken there
to to be a gift to Charles V, but there is a reproduction showing the kind of beautiful
luminous feathers that the Aztecs would often use. And so of course the Mass of Saint Gregory has
become kind of damaged over time, but originally it would have been very luminous and created that
kind of spiritual quality. I wanted to just compare it to the Codex Mendoza that dates to just a few
years later so you can get a sense of that kind of floating quality that we sometimes see in Aztec
art. In this particular case, we're looking at a folio -- a page -- of a codex and we're seeing the story
of a man preparing for either priest training or the military, and then we're also seeing the story
of a wedding. So hopefully you see kind of some of the stylistic similarities there. Our final example
related to the global renaissance is this pilgrim flask that is called -- a part of a group called
Medici Porcelain that dates to about the 1570s 1580s. And there I'm just comparing it again to
that porcelain vessel that we saw earlier. So this is the idea that by the end of the 16th century,
a lot of individuals were very interested in creating real porcelain. There was kind of this
race to create real porcelain, but as I mentioned earlier, they weren't sure how to make it
and they didn't have kilns that got hot enough and they didn't have the right clay; they didn't have
the right materials. But there was an individual named Francesco de' Medici who was the Grand Duke
of Tuscany -- that's kind of the ruler of Florence and the surrounding areas in Florence, Italy.
And so he really wanted to create porcelain, so he would spend long hours in kind of his workshop,
his laboratory. And he did create a version of what we call soft-paced porcelain. So not
the kind of true hard-paced porcelain, but a good version of it and very experimental in quality.
It tends to be a little heavier than true porcelain; the walls tend to be thicker, and we do
see some firing errors. So for example, if we zoom in on that kind of grotesque head along the side,
you can see some bubbles here, and just some slight imperfections in the firing on the other side. You
can see kind of some of these dimples in the firing as well and again some bubbles and just
a few issues in terms of how the firing process worked. Earlier on in the century people were fine
with just kind of covering darker earthenware with a white glaze. We call this maiolica
and so you see that here with kind of a merchant ship on the on the front here.But later on, they
really did want to create the true porcelain and so you see over here this Medici Porcelain flask
that almost gets there. It's very close to true porcelain, but they're not quite there. They
can't get the kiln hot enough. They don't have the right recipe. And they really think it's more like
a glass material or rock crystal material. They don't quite have the exact materials figured out.
And here I just wanted to show you an image of Francesco de' Medici and give you a sense of his
great interest in lots of different materials, probably coming from many different territories,
And we even have a discussion of this particular studiolo that he kept, which was kind of like a
miniature museum, where he kept different materials inside these different cabinets. So in fact, you can
open all of these paintings, and see small cabinets inside. And so the individual who [conceptually] designed it
Vicenzo Borghini wrote to the designer -- the person who would actually carry out the design Vasari, he
says he wants "a closet [or a wardrobe] in which to keep things that are rare and precious both
in terms of their value and artistic merit, that is to say jewels, medallions, precious stones, cut glass,
crystal vases, mechanical devices and other objects, not too big placed in their own cupboards
and divided according to category." So this idea and having more of an encyclopedic knowledge of places,
materials, all different types of artistic ware. So it is important to note that in Italy, they were ,
looking beyond the Italian peninsula and they were looking to collect things from all over the world
and also to be inspired by places all over the world, and there was a lot of complex political
issues that go along with that, but we do see more of an interest in looking beyond the Italian
peninsula of course starting around the late 15th century and moving into the 16th century. Thank you!