Oriental Rugs in Renaissance Florence Libreria della Spada Libri esauriti antichi e moderni Libri rari e di pregio da tutto il mondo

Oriental Rugs in Renaissance Florence

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Author(s)	Marco Spallanzani
Editor	S.P.E.S. - Studio Per Edizioni Scelte	Place	Firenze
Year	2007	Pages	280
Measure	21x31 (cm)	Illustration	94 ill. a colori, 7 ill. b/n n.t. - colors and b/w ills
Binding	cart. edit. con sovracc. ill. colori - Hardcover with dustjacket	Conservazione	Nuovo - New
Language	Inglese - English text	Weight	2000 (gr)
ISBN	8872423147	EAN-13	9788872423141

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(The Bruschettini Foundation for Islamic and Asian Art. textile Studies. 1).

Much has been written about the trade in Oriental rugs in Europe – in Italy in particular – using documentary and visual sources to identify types. Marco Spallanzani’s book takes the study of the trade to a higher level of precision and insight. It focuses on Florence from the fourteenth century to the sixteenth, and in a systematic way treats issues relating to supply and demand: importation, distribution, the range of customers, prices and sizes, functions and taste. It is a distillation of knowledge that comes from years of patient archival study, analysing hundreds of different types of document, from inventories to letters, from bills of lading to records of excise duty. The author uses visual evidence, and the book is beautifully illustrated in colour with depictions, mainly by Florentine painters, of scenes in which carpets, rugs and covers appear. The combination of documentary and visual sources, rigorously analysed, makes this book a fundamental study of the subject. -Anna Contadini, School of Oriental and African Art, London.