2. Adriatic Encounters: artistic exchanges via the Adriatic sea, c.1200-c.1700

Described by Fernand Braudel as ‘perhaps the most unified of all regions of the Mediterranean’, the Adriatic Sea was a crucial site of artistic encounter across the Medieval and Early Modern periods. Since the end of the Cold War, scholars from the former Yugoslavia in particular have paid increasing attention to the interconnectedness of artistic production on both coasts of the Adriatic. More recently, prominent scholarship such as Alina Payne’s edited 2022 volume The Land between Two Seas: Art on the Move in the Mediterranean and the Black Sea 1300–1700, has called into question traditional modes of art-historical classification by foregrounding the pronounced mobility and hybridity of maritime regions. While this scholarship productively engages with questions of exchange, identity and geographical boundaries, less attention has been given to how the experience of coastal environments and life at sea was mediated by art.

Spanning traditional categories of periodisation, this panel invites further discussion of the role of the Adriatic Sea in characterising artistic cultures across this geography. How is the sea represented in the art of this region, how was art used at sea, what forms of art did maritime journeys engender? How did artists help construct trans-Adriatic political entities and hegemonies? The panel allows for a reassessment of local and national identities as a constitutive element in the production of art, and how the sea facilitated artistic exchange between different media. It would also welcome theoretical papers that discuss the utility of geographical and maritime framings of art-historical enquiry.

Themes: Environment, the sea, cultural transfer

Additional format comment: Standard format.

Lead Convenor: Henry Tudor-Pole, University College London, United Kingdom

Co-convenors: Isaac Nugent, University of York, United Kingdom

To submit a Paper to this Session, please follow the guidance on our website and complete the AAH 2027 Call for Papers Proposal Submission Form.