#intercultural interactions

[medievalpoc]

Att. Kano Domi

Namban Byobu (detail): Portuguese Merchants on a Ship Arriving at a Japanese Port

Edo period, Japan (c. 1590-1600)

source

Namban Art

[medievalpoc]

Attributed to Kano Domi

“Barbarians From the South” Namban Byobu (detail)

Japan, Edo period (c. 1570-1600)

[source]

Namban Art

[medievalpoc]

The Alhambra as a source of inspiration for Western architects in the nineteenth century is well known and has been thoroughly documented. But “alhambresque” style was not just an Orientalist exoticism in the West. It was also used in Muslim contexts, where the style was considered suitable for public buildings—the entrance to the former Ministry of Defense building in Istanbul, for example—as well as for royal pavilions and palace interiors. In this article I explore the use of the alhambresque style in non-Western contexts in the nineteenth century, where “alhambresque” came to mean something more than simply fashionable exoticism.

“Versions and Visions of the Alhambra in the Nineteenth-Century Ottoman World", Anna McSweeney (SOAS, University of London) West 86th: A Journal of Decorative Arts, Design History, and Material Culture. FULL TEXT ONLINE

[mod note] This article has some surprisingly accessible info on how terms like “Moorish” mean something completely different depending on the context in which they are used:

“Moorish” is also frequently used to describe the art from all periods of Islamic rule in North Africa and in Spain—it includes the style of the mosques of Córdoba and Kairouan, for example, with their distinctive horseshoe-shaped arches.

By contrast, the term “Alhambresque” refers specifically to the style of architecture, inspired largely by depictions of the Alhambra palace, that was popularized in the second half of the nineteenth century. The history of the use of the term makes this association with nineteenth-century versions of the Alhambra clear.

[Fig. 1.  Edward Petrovich Hau (1807–87), Interiors of the Winter Palace: The Bathroom of Empress Alexandra Fyodorovna, 1870. Watercolor. Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg.]

It’s related to a problem I see sometimes, where people illustrate or conflate the “Moorish” occupation of parts of Europe, which happened c. 700-1400s, with Orientalist paintings from the 1890s like this one:

[medievalpoc]

Global Britain? A brief chronology of an awareness of Britain's existence

The following quick post is really just a bit of fun, designed to look briefly at the potential evidence for a spreading awareness of Britain's existence outside of Northwestern/Atlantic Europe...

The map below plots some of the possible evidence for such an awareness, both in terms of the earliest literary and cartographic references to Britain (in black) and some potential literary and archaeological evidence for the physical presence of people from Britain in those areas (in red).

[Map showing some of the earliest literary and cartographic references to Britain (in black) and potential evidence for the physical presence of people from Britain in areas outside of Northwestern/Atlantic Europe (in red). Image: C. R. Green, using a base map from Wikimedia Commons.]

[mod note] This is a very cool little article, tracing references through regions and centuries on a sort of timeline. TONS of links for further reading, and images of artworks and artifacts.

[medievalpoc]

Four Gospels in Arabic [BL Add. MS 11856]

Jerusalem (1335)

Opaque watercolor, gold, and ink on paper; 205 folios (27 × 20 cm)

A hurried glance at the decoration and script of this manuscript might suggest that it is a Qur’an, but the book in fact contains the four Christian gospels. Created for Arabic-speaking Christians in the Holy Land, it is a copy of what is known as the Arabic Vulgate, a translation drawn from Greek, Syriac, and Coptic versions of the Bible.   

-Metropolitan Museum of Art

[medievalpoc]

Depictions of Portuguese Merchants and Soldiers from the Court of Benin (and Nigeria); c. 1450s-1700s

Great Benin, where the King resides, is larger than Lisbon, all the streets run straight and as far as the eyes can see. The houses are large, especially that of the king which is richly decorated and has Fine columns. The city is wealthy and industrious. It is so well governed that theft is unknown and the people live in such Security that they have no door to their houses.

- Lourenco Pinto, Portuguese ship captain, 1691 [see also Africa and the Development of International Law; ed. by Taslim Olawale Elias, Richard Akinjide, p 11-13]