European art and the wider world 1350-1550 considers select examples of European art and material culture through the lens of global connections. Investigating canonical artworks such as altarpieces as well as lesser-known objects such as ceramics, textiles, and featherwork, it re-examines European visual culture during a time of global transformations. In a series of close readings it considers the reception in Europe of objects from Asia, America and Africa and re-interprets works of art in the light of cultural encounter and conflict. It considers a wide range of art-historical contexts, from Venice, to Al-Andalus, to Goa. The book is animated by approaches that have recently transformed the field of European art history. These have looked again at works of art long considered part of a quintessentially Western 'Renaissance' and read them in the light of cultural encounters with the wider world. Traditional approaches to the Renaissance have been concerned with humanism and the revival of antiquity, which have been understood as the sources of Europe's unique self-propelled innovations and achievements. This book, however, complicates this story by underlining the significance of Europe's connected and conflicted relationship with rest of the world for the history of the Renaissance. It weighs the impact of global connections on the art and material culture of the period, a perspective which is still missing from teaching texts. The book should thus appeal to undergraduate art history students as well as a general public eager to look at a canonical era of European art from a new perspective.

Introduction - Kathleen Christian and Leah Clark
1 Renaissance altarpieces: the far in the near - Kathleen Christian
2 Cultural crossings in Spain and the New World c. 1350-c.1550 - Kim Woods
3 Collecting the world: art, nature, and representation - Leah Clark
4 Aspects of art in Venice: encounters with the East - Paul Wood with Kathleen Christian and Leah Clark
Conclusion - Kathleen Christian and Leah Clark
Index