scholarly journals New World Objects of Knowledge: A Cabinet of Curiosities

2021 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
New World ◽  
Cultural Productions ◽  
The World ◽  
Objects Of Knowledge ◽  
Late Fifteenth ◽  
Cabinet Of Curiosities ◽  
Private Collections

From the late fifteenth century to the present day, the New World has been plundered and pilfered for its many ‘treasures’ and ‘wonders’ and as a consequence, many of its natural and cultural productions have been scattered around the world, often hidden in libraries, museums and private collections. New World Objects of Knowledge: A Cabinet of Curiosities gathers a fascinating sampling of these scattered objects in forty richly illustrated essays written by world-leading scholars in the field. We discover the secret, often global, itineraries of such things as Aztec codices and Inca mummies, colonial paintings and indigenous maps, giant tortoises and precious hummingbirds.

Cultural Encounter

2021 ◽  
pp. 9-25
Author(s):  
John Parker
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Gold Coast ◽  
Life And Death ◽  
Cultural Encounter ◽  
The World ◽  
Late Fifteenth

This chapter begins to set out the landscape of Willem Bosman's cultural encounter as it unfolded on the Gold Coast from the late fifteenth century. It highlights a set of fundamental metaphysical questions that, in the broadest sense, framed understandings of life and death among the Akan and their neighbours: Where did mankind come from? How did death come into the world? Where do people go when they die? By beginning the story with Bosman, the intention is not to recapitulate older ideas of the coast of Guinea as a 'white man's grave'. Rather, the chapter suggests that the reality and representation of the African encounter with mortality became entangled with the encounter with European others.

Mega-structures of the Middle Ages: the construction of religious buildings in Europe and Asia,c.1000–1500

2011 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 381-406 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maarten Prak
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Modular Design ◽  
Middle Eastern ◽  
Construction Work ◽  
Religious Buildings ◽  
Modern Engineering ◽  
The World ◽  
Late Fifteenth ◽  
The Middle Ages

AbstractHow did medieval builders manage to construct some of the tallest structures in the world without access to modern engineering theories? Construction drawings were limited to details and, with only a handful exceptions, manuals for builders only appeared in the late fifteenth century. By implication, the relevant knowledge had to be transferred on a personal basis. Its underlying principles must therefore have been reasonably simple. This article shows how a modular design, combined with on-site experimentation, guided much of the construction work on large projects such as European cathedrals, Middle Eastern mosques, Indian temples, and Chinese pagoda towers.

Wangara, Akan and Portuguese in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. I. The matter of Bitu

1982 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 333-349 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ivor Wilks
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Trade Agreements ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Modern Times ◽  
The World ◽  
Early Modern Times ◽  
Late Fifteenth

In late medieval and early modern times West Africa was one of the principal suppliers of gold to the world bullion market. In this context the Matter of Bitu is one of much importance. Bitu lay on the frontiers of the Malian world and was one of its most flourishing gold marts. So much is clear from sixteenth- and seventeenth-century writings, both African and European. A review of this body of evidence indicates that the gold trade at Bitu was controlled by the Wangara, who played a central role in organizing trade between the Akan goldfields and the towns of the Western Sudan. It is shown that Bitu cannot be other than Bighu (Begho, Bew, etc.), the abandoned Wangara town lying on the northwestern fringes of the Akan forest country, which is known (from excavation) to have flourished in the relevant period. In the late fifteenth century the Portuguese established posts on the southern shores of the Akan country, so challenging the monopolistic position which the Wangara had hitherto enjoyed in the gold trade. The Portuguese sent envoys to Mali, presumably to negotiate trade agreements. The bid was apparently unsuccessful. The struggle for the Akan trade in the sixteenth century between Portuguese and Malian interests will be treated in the second part of this paper.

scholarly journals The oldest herpetological collection in the world: the surviving amphibian and reptile specimens of the Museum of Ulisse Aldrovandi

2013 ◽  
Vol 34 (3) ◽  
pp. 305-321 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aaron M. Bauer ◽  
Alessandro Ceregato ◽  
Massimo Delfino
Keyword(s):  
New World ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Museum Specimens ◽  
Natural Philosopher ◽  
Archival Material ◽  
Natural History Collection ◽  
The World ◽  
Renaissance Italy ◽  
Cabinet Of Curiosities ◽  
Modern Sense

The natural history collection of the Bolognese polymath, encyclopedist, and natural philosopher Ulisse Aldrovandi (1522-1605) is regarded as the first museum in the modern sense of the term. It was intended as a resource for scholarship and a microcosm of the natural world, not simply a cabinet of curiosities. In addition to physical specimens, Aldrovandi’s zoological material included a large series of paintings of animals (Tavole di Animali) that were integral to the collection. Following Aldrovandi’s death, his collection was maintained by the terms of his will, but by the 19th century relatively little remained. We examined surviving herpetological components of the collection, comprising 19 specimens of ten species, as well as the corresponding paintings and associated archival material in the Museum of Palazzo Poggi, Museo di Zoologia, and Biblioteca Universitaria Bolognese in Bologna, Italy. Although the antiquity of some of these dried preparations is in question, many are documented in the Tavole di Animali and/or are mentioned in 17th century lists of the museum, verifying them as the oldest museum specimens of amphibians and reptiles in the world. Exotic species are best represented, including two specimens of Uromastyx aegyptia and several boid snakes – the first New World reptiles to be displayed in Europe. However, the Tavole di Animali suggest that the original collection was dominated by Italian taxa and that greater effort may have been made to conserve the more spectacular specimens. The Aldrovandi collection provides a tangible link to the dawn of modern herpetology in Renaissance Italy.

scholarly journals Asia and the World Economy in Historical Perspective

2019 ◽  
pp. 80-106
Author(s):  
Ronald Findlay
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Historical Perspective ◽  
New World ◽  
Industrial Revolution ◽  
The Political ◽  
Economic Evolution ◽  
The World ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Past Millennium

This chapter studies the political and economic evolution of trade and international relations of the counties and regions of Asia, both between themselves and the rest of the world, over the past millennium, paying particular attention to the geographic and cultural background; the underlying demographic and economic mechanism of the classical Malthus-Ricardo model; the Pax Mongolica and overland trade along the Silk Roads during the Middle Ages; the European intrusion at the turn of the fifteenth century and the impact of the discovery of the New World; the spread of European imperialism and the rise of nationalism and the achievement of independence. A final section discusses the comparative evolution of Europe and Asia and the question of why the Industrial Revolution did not first occur in Asia.

scholarly journals Holy Land Pilgrimage and Geography in Fifteenth-Century England

2021 ◽  
Vol 51 (1) ◽  
pp. 105-139
Author(s):  
Marianne O’Doherty
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Historical Research ◽  
Holy Land ◽  
Corpus Christi ◽  
The World ◽  
Late Fifteenth ◽  
English Manuscript

This article discusses a single late-fifteenth-century English manuscript as evidence for an understudied form of “virtual” pilgrimage. Bringing together the techniques of codicological, textual, and cartographic-historical research, the article shows how Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 426 presents a vision of the world profoundly inflected by Holy Land pilgrimage, in which scholarly, mathematical geography is placed in the service of knowledge and understanding of the Holy Land. Indeed, within MS 426, the process of gaining understanding of the world’s geography and of the place of the Holy Land within it becomes a kind of virtual pilgrimage: a form of vicarious wandering that prompts religious contemplation and devotion. The article, which includes discussion of the manuscript’s unique and previously unstudied Jerusalem map, thus reminds us to keep in mind the inadequacy of modern taxonomies for dealing with the messy materialities of medieval texts.

Porcelain on Display Decorative and other Uses of Oriental Porcelain in Europe

1992 ◽  
Vol 267 ◽  
Author(s):  
Oliver R. Impey
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Precious Metal ◽  
Late Fifteenth ◽  
Cabinet Of Curiosities

ABSTRACTChinese porcelain began to reach Europe in quantity in the late fifteenth century, Japanese in the mid seventeenth. Apart from a brief interlude in the mid seventeenth century, Chinese porcelain was imported until well into the nineteenth century, Japanese only until the 1740s. This porcelain was at first a rarity, to be mounted in precious-metal mounts or kept in the Cabinet of Curiosities. Soon it was to be displayed as part of the decorative effect in a room, while in some cases it became the decorative effect; the porcelain room. Porcelain was imitated in Europe and not much used until it was cheap enough. As the “China-mania” died, porcelain was kept as part of room decoration, often in the new china cupboards.

Contextualizing Josquin’s Ave Maria…virgo serena

2017 ◽  
Vol 34 (2) ◽  
pp. 182-240
Author(s):  
Clare Bokulich
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Musical Style ◽  
Growing Body ◽  
Late Fifteenth ◽  
The Moment

Notwithstanding the reputation of Josquin’s Ave Maria…virgo serena as a touchstone of late–fifteenth-century musical style, little is known about the context in which the piece emerged. Just over a decade ago, Joshua Rifkin placed the motet in Milan ca. 1484; more recently, Theodor Dumitrescu has uncovered stylistic affinities with Johannes Regis’s Ave Maria that reopen the debate about the provenance of Josquin's setting. Stipulating that the issues of provenance and dating are for the moment unsolvable, I argue that the most promising way forward is to contextualize this work to the fullest extent possible. Using the twin lenses of genre and musical style, I investigate the motet’s apparently innovative procedures (e.g., paired duos, periodic entries, and block chords) in order to refine our understanding of how Josquin’s setting relates to that of Regis and to the Milanese motet cycles (motetti missales). I also uncover connections between Josquin’s motet and the music of earlier generations, above all the cantilena and the forme fixe chanson, that offer new insights into the development of musical style in the fifteenth century. The essay concludes by positioning the types of analyses explored here within a growing body of research that enables a revitalized approach to longstanding questions about compositional development and musical style.

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