Collecting Art in the Italian Renaissance Court

Objects and Exchanges

Leah R. Clark

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN:
  9781108427722
• eBook ISBN:
  9781108586535
• Topic: Art
• Subtopic: Art General

In this book, Leah R. Clark examines collecting practices across the Italian Renaissance court, exploring the circulation, exchange, collection, and display of objects. Rather than focusing on patronage strategies or the political power of individual collectors, she uses the objects themselves to elucidate the dynamic relationships formed through their exchange. Her study brings forward the mechanisms that structured relations within the court, and most importantly, also with individuals, representations, and spaces outside the court. The volume examines the courts of Italy through the wide variety of objects - statues, paintings, jewellery, furniture, and heraldry - that were valued for their subject matter, material forms, histories, and social functions. As Clark shows, the late fifteenth-century Italian court an be located not only in the body of the prince, but also in the objects that constituted symbolic practices, initiated political dialogues, caused rifts, created memories, and formed associations.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-title
• Title page
• Copyright information
• Table of contents
• List of illustrations
• List of colour plates
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction: Mobile Objects and Sociable Exchanges in the Renaissance Court
• One Carafa’s testa di cavallo: The Life of a Bronze Gifthorse
• Two Practices of Exchange: Merchant Bankers and the Circulation of Objects
• Three Intertextuality and Collection at the Court of Ferrara: Roberti’s Diptych
• Four The Order of the Ermine: Collars, Cloaks, and the Circulation of The Sign
• Conclusion: Towards A New Understanding of Objects at Court
• Appendix: Eleonora d’Aragona’s Inventories
• Notes
• Primary Archival Sources
• Bibliography
• Index
• Plates