From Mexico to Mughal India: Global Art Exchange during the Renaissance

Fascinating online lecture from the London Art History Society Online looking at the exchange of artist ideas between Europe and the new west and east in the Renaissance.

Given by Ursula Weekes it explained how the Renaissance was a great period of exploration then split her talk between looking east and west. Starting with the diplomatic mission to the Ottoman Empire of which Gentile Bellini was part she then looked to how Vasco De Gama’s ‘discovery’ of India led to an interest in Western art in the Mughal Empire. She had some lovely examples of where Mughal artists produced works influenced by Western prints and paintings.

She then looked West, which is an influence I know less about, talking about how trade and diplomatic missions brought artefacts from the Aztecs to Europe and how knowledge of the people of North America were spread via etchings.

I loved her concluding picture from India in 1620 which shows an Indian hunter and his wife where the pose is based on some of these aforementioned etchings, so we see ideas from the new west reaching the east via Europe.

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