Objects record their material pasts: A medieval manuscript’s parchment pages, for instance, retain traces of animal bodies and thus reflect their physical source. Similarly, varying states of silver corrosion and shades of gold could have reminded its readers that metallic colours were produced from differently sourced and alloyed metals (Herbert 2022; Degler/Wenderholm 2016). Illuminations with rare pigments, such as lapis-lazuli, could transport connotations of precious foreignness and geographical expanse (Dunlop 2014), while a so-called toadstone placed on a book cover may have evoked a legendary origin, such as described in the Hortus sanitatis.
Medieval patrons, craftsmen, sellers, and users were highly attentive to the material qualities of artefacts and to their components’ encapsulated memories of provenance. For example, Book III of Theophilus’ twelfth-century Schedula diversarum artium describes various types of gold, including “gold of the land of Havilah”, “Arabian gold”, “Spanish gold” and “sand gold”, which is said to be found on the banks of the Rhine (Dodwell 1998, pp. 96-98). The author mentions their colour and properties, as well as elaborating on their – often legendary – circumstances of extraction.
The conditions of an object or a raw material’s acquisition could also be assessed on ethical grounds, as shown by the fourteenth-century Rawḍ al-Qirṭās, a royal chronicle and history of Fez. Here, provenance is examined through a golden bracelet endowed to the Qarawiyyin mosque by the Marinid ruler Abū Yaʿqūb Yūsuf (r. 1286–1307). According to the chronicle, the bracelet was made from booty taken in a war against Christians in al-Andalus and inherited by the ruler from his mother (Roudh el-Kartas 1860, p. 88). Its verifiably “pure” (ḥalāl) circumstances of acquisition and ownership chain made this piece of jewellery an appropriate resource to finance construction works in a religious edifice.
Institut für Kunstwissenschaft und Historische Urbanistik, Technische Universität Berlin, 3-4, September 2026
For additional information, visit: medievalartresearch.com/2026/02/11/cfp-material-memory-and-the-provenances-of-medieval-artefacts-deadline-15-march-2026/
You must be logged in to post a comment.