Gold: The Universal Equivalent of Global Dreams, Desires, Arts and
Values in Early Modern History
Villa I Tatti, Florence, 9-10 June 2016
This conference brings together scholars from different disciplines to
analyze the economic and artistic values of gold and their place in the
interconnected world of Early Modern European, African, Asian and
American cultures. Although gold is recognized as a "beguiling"
universal equivalent as recently discussed by Zorach and Phillips
(2016), the values of gold are also historically specific. The early
modern world represents one of gold's crucial transformative moments
when its various meanings and roles were reaffirmed and/or transformed.
The focus of the conference will be on articulating specific instances
of the shifting uses, roles, and values of gold within the artistic,
economic and symbolic arenas of world cultures. Changes as well as
continuities in local cultures are in part conditioned by new global
contacts that are sustained by gold’s importance within imperial
ambitions and mercantile capitalism.
Organizer: Thomas Cummins (Harvard University)
Program
Thursday, 9 June 2016
Introductory Remarks
09.45
Alina Payne (Director, Villa I Tatti)
Thomas Cummins (Harvard University)
Gold in the Arts of Renaissance Italy
Chair: Estelle Lingo (Villa I Tatti, University of Washington)
10.00
Carlo Taviani (Istituto Storico Germanico di Roma)
The Genoese and Gold During the Renaissance
10.30
Anne Dunlop (University of Melbourne)
On Gold and Goldbacks
11.00
Coffee
11.30
Cecilia Frosinini (Opificio delle Pietre Dure)
The Gold Experience in Italian Artisan Tradition between the Middle
Ages and the Renaissance in Florence
12.00
Discussion
13.00
Buffet lunch
The Circulation of Gold in the Arts of the World
Chair: Hannah Baader (Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz)
14.30
Craig Clunas (Oxford University)
Gold: a Mongol Legacy in Ming China?
15.00
Suzanne Preston Blier (Harvard University)
Gold! Art and the African Trade
15.30
Kris Lane (Tulane University)
In the Shadow of Silver: The Gold of New Granada under the Habsburgs
16.00
Discussion
Friday, 10 June 2016
The Magic and Science of Gold
Chair: Paola D’Agostino (Museo Nazionale del Bargello)
10.00
Chiara Crisciani (Università degli studi di Pavia)
Oro potabile tra alchimia e medicina (secoli XIII-XV)
10.30
Noam Andrews (Harvard University)
"Mysterium Cosmographicum": Johannes Kepler's Gold Rush
11.00
Coffee
11.30
Yukio Lippit (Harvard University)
The Emergence of the Gold Screen in 16th/17th Century Japan
12.00
Discussion
13.00
Buffet lunch
The Geo-Religious Politics of Gold in Spain and the World
Chair: Carl Strehlke (Philadelphia Museum of Art)
14.30
Abigail Balbale (Bard Graduate Center)
Gold, Islam, and the Spanish "Reconquista"
15.00
Maria Lumbreras (Johns Hopkins University)
Luminous Relics: Material Mimesis in the Early Modern Iberian World
15.30
Thomas Cummins (Harvard University)
"By means of Gold even the doors of paradise can be opened to the
soul:" God's golden mines in America and what they wrought in Early
Modern Images and Texts
16.00 Discussion
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