Was the Renaissance global?

In this short film, Dr Leah Clark discusses a Renaissance painting by the Italian court artist Andrea Mantegna, which depicts the Adoration of the Magi. Mantegna provides us with one of the first representations of Chinese porcelain in a Western painting, underlining the global dimension to the work and its context. Dr Clark provides a close visual analysis of Mantegna’s painterly and compositional techniques, largely drawn from antique sculpture, but she also explains how the painting would have functioned on a number of levels: as a devotional work in a Christian context; as a showcase for the collections of the rulers of Mantua, Italy; and as a reflection of the global reach of diplomacy and trade in the Renaissance.

Transcript of film

Related resources:

Teaching support sheet

Student handout

This film is also available on our youtube channel

To find related items:

Watch our critical term film on hybridity

 See the following themes:

cultural hybridity; globalisation; history of art; material culture; Renaissance; world art

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