And ‘Art’? Where is all of this in European art? The simple answer is that it is there in images: images long overlooked and little discussed but now brought forward by many writers in the new wave of Renaissance art history.Venetian art is the nonpareil. The East is there in portraits of sultans; it is there in turbaned figures talking in groups in piazzas off to the side or behind the central commercial or Christian events being represented; it is there in the dark‐skinned figure of Balthasar in pictures of the Magi – likely Persian Zoroastrian priests – paying homage at the nativity; it is there in Carpaccio and Gentile Bellini’s chronicle paintings of the encounter of Christians and pagans; it is there, in the shape of Chinese porcelain bowls, in Titian’s picture of the gods carousing. It is in the fabric of the city’s architecture, all the way from the gold and marble of San Marco to the sculpted reliefs of a turbaned porter and a camel set into buildings beside the canals. It is also there in the vivid blues of the Virgin’s robe, in the form of lapis lazuli from Afghanistan. The wider world is present too in northern European art: in Holbein’s Turkish carpet draping his Ambassadors’ table, and in the red line of the Treaty of Tordesillas dividing the world between Portugal and Spain, running down the globe in the same painting. Africans and Turks and Jews nestle in Dürer’s martyrdoms, even sometimes, a portrait of an African. In Spain, South American ‘Indians’ both tackle conquistadors and stand in for Balthasar as the Magi do homage. Outside the world of the fine arts as such, the world appears in Europe in a multiplicity of costume books as well as the metalwork traditionally labelled Veneto‐Saracenic; it is there in leather bindings to books. Above all, perhaps, it is there on maps, in the shape of exotic animals and differently dressed people wandering the continents. And on and on.
From the Renaissance onwards, the world is in the art of the West. And yet, perhaps that is the main point. For in all of this art, the traces of the world live within the European frame. Lifelikeness, mimesis, imitation, the apparently seamless representation of the world as it is, succeeded in encapsulating the image of the wider world within its Western frame. Perspective, which allows the representation of everything, however exotic, simultaneously underwrites the subordination of everything too. It absorbed the flat, the bright, the abstract, the stylized, but it also implicitly relegated them within the hierarchy of representation it established in the fifteenth century and continued to underwrite until well into the nineteenth.
Yet, looked at from a slightly different angle, perhaps the keystone image, as it were, is not itself held within a perspective frame. That image can be found in a map, and not in a depicted animal or ‘savage’ roaming around its edges, but in the very form of the map itself. In the different sort of perspective grid formed by lines of latitude and longitude, it is the map‐as‐image itself which does the work. Mercator’s canonical projection of the world, with its definitive centering of Europe, first appeared in 1569. In the scientific mapping of the world by Europeans, no less than in the perspectival spaces of European art, the world is always there, but by the same token, always held in its place, literally.
IA Figures of Wealth and Power
IA1 Robert of Clari (fl c.1200–16) from The Conquest of Constantinople
Robert of Clari was a French knight from Picardy who took part in the Fourth Crusade. Destined for the Holy Land, this expedition became notorious when, under Venetian pressure, it was diverted to capture Constantinople. The sack of Constantinople in 1204 marked a shift in the balance of power in the Eastern Mediterranean (then one of the major crossroads of the world) from the Byzantine Empire to Venice. Although Greek monarchs were restored later in the thirteenth century, the conquest marked the beginning of the end of Byzantine power, which had extended unbroken since late antiquity, when Constantinople had been made capital of the eastern Roman Empire in 330 CE. Robert of Clari’s account, dictated in 1216, just over a decade after his return to France, is often credited as a more realistic account of the events than those given by the aristocratic leaders of the crusade. We have selected passages in which Robert offers an eyewitness account of the riches of Byzantium as manifest in the palaces, churches and material culture of the city. Much of the loot, ranging from gold, jewels and works of art to marble columns and, not least, the classical bronze sculpture of four horses known as the quadrigi, went on to be incorporated into the fabric of Venice. The text is from Robert of Clari, The Conquest of Constantinople, translated by Edgar H. McNeal, New York: Columbia University Press, 1936, pp. 101–12.
Not since the world was made, was there ever seen or won so great a treasure or so noble or so rich, not in the time of Alexander nor in the time of Charlemagne nor before nor after. Nor do I think, myself, that in the forty richest cities of the world there had been so much wealth as was found in Constantinople. For the Greeks say two thirds of the wealth of this world is in Constantinople and the other third scattered throughout the world.
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Now I will tell you about the church of Saint Sophia, how it was made. Saint Sophia in Greek means Sainte Trinité in French. The church of Saint Sophia was entirely round, and within the church there were domes, round all about, which were borne by great and very rich columns, and there was no column which was not of jasper or porphyry or some other precious stone, nor was there one of these columns that did not work cures. There was one that cured sickness of the reins [i.e. backache] when it was rubbed against, and another that cured sickness of the side, and others that cured other ills. And there was no door in this church and no hinges or bands or other parts such as are usually made of iron that were not all of silver. The master altar of the church was so rich that it was beyond price, for the table of the altar was made of gold and precious stones broken up and crushed all together, which a rich emperor had had made. This table was fully fourteen feet long. Around the altar were columns of silver supporting a canopy over the altar which was made just like a church spire, and it was all of solid silver and was so rich that no one could tell the money it was worth. The place where they read the gospel was so fair and noble that we could not describe it to you how it was made. Then down through the church there hung fully a hundred chandeliers, and there was not one that did not hang by a great silver chain as thick as a man’s arm. And there were in each chandelier full five and twenty lamps or more. And there was not a chandelier that was not worth at least two hundred marks of silver. […]
Then in front of this church of Saint Sophia there was a great column which was fully three times the reach of a man’s arms in thickness and was fully fifty toises in height. It was made of marble and of copper over the marble and was bound about with strong bands of iron. And on top of this column there lay a flat slab of stone which was fully fifteen feet in length and as much in width. On this stone there was an emperor made of copper on a great copper horse, and he was holding out his hand toward heathendom, and there were letters written on the statue which said that he swore that the Saracens should never have truce from him. And in the other hand he held a golden globe with a cross on it. […]
Elsewhere in the city there is another gate which is called the Golden Gate. On this gate there were two elephants made of copper which were so large that it was a fair marvel. This gate was never opened except when an emperor was returning from battle after conquering territory. And when an emperor returned from battle after conquering territory, then the clergy of the city would come out in procession to meet him, and the gate would be opened, and they would bring out a chariot of gold, which was made like a cart with four wheels, such as we call a curre. Now in the middle of this