The artistic culture of the early modern period is characterized by increasing migration of artists, as well as an exchange of ideas, forms, knowledge, and technologies. These issues of artistic migration and cultural exchange have become key topics in the field of early modern art history, both within Europe and globally. Scholars approach these topics from a variety of points of view, using a wide range of evidence and analytic techniques including: contemporary written sources and descriptions; financial accounts; iconographic analysis; the motivations for and routes of migration; instances of collaboration or conflict between local and migrant artists; and careful examination of the style, materials, and techniques of resulting works. Recent reassessments of the geography of early modern art history and critiques of the center-and-periphery model of influence and reception further complicate matters.

This panel seeks to assess the approaches taken to issues of artistic migration from a broad range of sources. Papers that either address scholarly approaches broadly or use case studies to illuminate the value of or problems with a particular approach are welcome. Topics may include, but are not limited to:

- Themes of center-and-periphery, cultural or stylistic transfer, and reception, their value or limitations

- Studies of artists’ motivations for migration, their routes, financial situations

- Issues of integration in the new location including collaboration or conflict with local artists, and relationship to existing corporate structures such as guilds or court bureaucracies

- The reception of migrant artists by scholars in their home region or destination region

- Concepts of “nationality” for migrant artists in the early modern period and in modern scholarly or popular interpretation

- Approaches to the analysis of early modern written sources, archival or literary, and their value and limitations for the interpretation of artistic migration and the works it produced

If you are interested, please send a 150 word abstract and 1 page CV to Sarah W. Lynch (sarah.lynch@fau.de) by 10 August. For more information about the RSA Annual Meeting, please see the conference website: https://www.rsa.org/page/RSADublin2021