Courtly Mediators Book Launch

Celebrate the launch of Kellogg Arts Fellow Leah Clark’s latest book, Courtly Mediators: Transcultural Objects between Renaissance Italy and the Islamic World.

In Courtly Mediators, Leah R. Clark investigates the exchange of a range of materials and objects, including metalware, ceramic drug jars, Chinese porcelain, and aromatics, across the early modern Italian, Mamluk, and Ottoman courts. She provides a new narrative that places Aragonese Naples at the centre of an international courtly culture, where cosmopolitanism and the transcultural flourished, and in which artists, ambassadors, and luxury goods actively participated. By articulating how and why transcultural objects were exchanged, displayed, copied, and framed, she provides a new methodological framework that transforms our understanding of the Italian Renaissance court. Clark’s volume provides a multi-sensorial, innovative reading of Italian Renaissance art. It demonstrates that the early modern culture of collecting was more than a humanistic enterprise associated with the European roots of the Renaissance. Rather, it was sustained by interactions with global material cultures from the Islamic world and beyond.

You will also have the opportunity to immerse yourself in the sounds and smells of the Renaissance through a multisensorial interactive experience! Books will be available for purchase.

This event is free and open to all. Refreshments will be served from 17:00. The talk will begin at 17:30, followed by a drinks reception at 18:30.

Should you have any further queries, or unable to attend after booking, please contact events@kellogg.ox.ac.uk

Leah Clark is Arts Fellow and Official Fellow at Kellogg. Leah’s research explores the exchange, mobility and collecting of art objects in the early modern world. She is author of Courtly Mediators: Transcultural Objects Between Renaissance Italy and the Islamic World (Cambridge University Press, 2023), Collecting Art in the Italian Renaissance Court: Objects and Exchanges (Cambridge University Press, 2018), co-editor of European Art and the Wider World 1350-1550 (Manchester University Press, 2017) and co-editor of The Mobility of Objects Across Boundaries (Liverpool University Press, 2022).

Leah’s research engages with the sensorial experiences of early modern objects and she co-organises with Helen Coffey (Music, the Open University) an interdisciplinary conference on Early Modern Sensory Experiences (EMSE) at Kellogg annually. She is also a convenor of the Digital Humanities and Sensory Heritage (DHSH) network, led by Emanuela Vai.

Open to: Members of Kellogg College, the public,