The term "art"

"Art" is a controversial term whose meaning has changed several times over the centuries. The original Greek term techné and its Latin equivalent ars originally designated crafting skills that could be employed to make objects according to established rules. Hence such pieces, nowadays considered artworks, belonged to the overarching group of artefacts – in other words, material objects created by humans. The production of such objects had the status of artes mechanicae: mechanical or practical arts, distinct from and subordinate to the artes liberals. The Renaissance era saw the first efforts to have a special status attributed to painting, sculpture, and architecture – the arts of disegno, or design (those that shared the common practice of drawing as a preparatory step in the creative process). The modern concept of "fine arts" (painting, sculpture, poetry, music, and dance), which only emerged in the 18th century, was challenged in the 20th century by the opening up of the category and the questioning of the fundamental aesthetic principle of imitation of nature by modern and contemporary art.¹ Encounters with other cultures were another factor that repeatedly called the European, or "Western" notion of art into question. This led to an expansion of the understanding of what art is to embrace, alongside the traditional "high arts", of other categories of artefacts (such as the "applied arts"), and to a dehierarchization of the various types of art in the context of visual studies. This paper focuses on what is known as the "fine arts".

Art in motion and its actors

Common to all objects in the category of artefacts that may be designated as art is their potential to elicit, through their various aesthetic qualities, emotional reactions – to move people. Movement is also intrinsic to the concept of art in many ways: people travelled to make art, and to admire it in other places; sought-after artworks were exported, brought back from voyages as souvenirs, or captured and taken away as war booty. Through their mobility, art and its actors have influenced and indeed initiated intercultural communication and transfer processes throughout Europe's history.

Mobile artists

The journeyman years and travel for education (Bildungsreisen)

Mobility is a significant aspect of artistic occupation. The journeyman years were a standard element of the training of craftspeople under the guild system that regulated the production of art well into the early 19th century.² The expectation was that in leaving their familiar environment, the fully trained apprentice should expand the skill set they had learned by experiencing and training in new technologies, themes, and forms. The journeyman years, which ranged from one to six depending on the guild, could be spent either in neighbouring towns or distant centres of art.³ Young adepts often found it difficult to be accepted into the workshop of their choice, however, because guilds tended to restrict the influx of external specialists to protect the interests of local craftspeople.⁴

The architect, painter, and artist biographer Giorgio Vasari (1511–1574) described in his influential work Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects (1^st ed. 1550) the following case: the painter Taddeo Zuccari (1529–1566) from Sant'Angelo, near Urbino, wanted to be taken on in the atelier of Perino del Vaga (1501–1547) in Rome. Despite having a letter of recommendation, he was curtly turned away – by his own kinsman, Francesco Il Sant'Angelo, who already worked there.⁵ Around 1595, Zuccari's younger brother Federico (1541–1609) made an impressive drawing of the scene against the backdrop of the famous buildings in Rome as part of a series of drawings portraying Taddeo's early life.

The restrictions imposed by the guilds and the unwillingness of master craftspeople to employ journeymen from other towns in their workshops were not the only obstacles facing these newly-fledged professionals in their further training. In many cases, they could not afford the fee to be taken on in a famous atelier. The Königsberg-born Baroque painter Michaël Willmann (1630–1706), later active in Silesia, was one such. In 1650 he journeyed to Amsterdam to study the contemporary art of masters there, but was ultimately forced to content himself with the purchase of engravings by Jacob Adriaenszoon Backer (1608–1651) and Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn (1606–1669) as a means of studying their technique. A comparison of his etched self-portrait with one of Rembrandt's is testimony to the fact that Willmann took inspiration from the great Netherlandish master not only in terms of his technique but also in respect of the motifs he used.⁶ In subsequent years, he travelled on across Europe and spent a longer period in Prague, where he gleaned further creative impulses for his work.⁷ The impressions he amassed developed into a highly individual stylistic idiom that secured Willmann a prominent position in 17th-century Central European painting.

Hints about such educational journeys undertaken in the Early Modern Age but whose routes were rarely documented in any detail were traditionally sought and reconstructed by art historians through the medium of stylistic criticism and analysis of the motifs occurring in the works. Thus, for instance, it is presumed, on the basis of stylistic analyses, that the sculptor Veit Stoß (1447–1533), who was born in Horb am Neckar, came into contact with the work of Nicolaus Gerhaert von Leiden (1420–1473) during his journeyman years, before settling down in Nuremberg and later Krakow.⁸

In isolated cases, there are indeed freehand drawings, and even more rarely, whole sketchbooks documenting such travels. One group of drawings by Albrecht Dürer (1471–1528) dated 1494–1496 offers an insight into his experiences during the voyage undertaken by the young painter to Northern Italy following his journeyman years.⁹ En route, one of his subjects was the city of Innsbruck, which he depicted in watercolours.

Friendship books (alba amicorum)¹⁰ were popular from the late 16th century, also among itinerant artists. Containing dated entries by people they met during their travels, these scrapbooks are another source of information on the places they visited and the experiences they gathered. According to his friendship book, between 1647 und 1653, the Augsburg journeyman painter Johann König the Younger, for instance, travelled to cities such as Nuremberg, Ulm, Stuttgart, Kempten, Nördlingen, and Coburg, and collected illustrated entries from people including his fellow journeymen on the way.¹¹ The painter and draughtsman Mathias Strasser (d. 1659) gave him a washed pen-and-ink drawing of the renowned Torso Belvedere.¹² This was undoubtedly intended as a reference to Strasser's travels to Italy, and hence also to present him to his less well-travelled fellow artist as a connoisseur of ancient art.¹³

After the establishment of the first art academies in the 16th century (the Accademia delle Arti del Disegno in Florence in 1563, the Accademia di San Luca in Rome in 1593, the Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture in Paris in 1648, and the Maler-Akademie in Nuremberg in 1662, to name but a few), these offered an attractive alternative to the system of education within the weakening guilds.¹⁴ Supported by rulers, who saw them as a way of rendering their cities more attractive, they drew in artists from other regions, thus becoming influential centres for meeting new people and exchanging ideas. In emulation of the French academy, which awarded the Prix de Rome, enabling fine artists to spend several years studying in Rome,¹⁵ other countries also founded state or private grants to facilitate artistic education at the best art schools and promote knowledge of major centres of art. Florence and Rome remained the most popular destinations for art students into the 18th century, but in the 19th they were overtaken by Paris.¹⁶ The academies in Düsseldorf and München also attracted would-be artists from many countries; the latter above all was the cradle of many European national schools.¹⁷

With very few exceptions, women were denied access to an academic art education until the early 20th century, which considerably restricted their participation in intercultural exchange. Individuals such as the successful Swiss-Austrian painter Angelika Kauffmann (1741–1807), who as the daughter of an artist was able to enjoy a proper education and supplement it with extensive travels, eventually becoming a founding member of the Royal Academy in London, were a tiny minority.¹⁸ Kaufmann's special status is documented in a painting by John Zoffany (1733–1810) depicting the Academicians of the Royal Academy at a nude studio session. The two female Academy members, Kaufmann and Mary Moser (1744–1810)[], are represented in the room in the form of portraits on the wall, since their physical presence at a nude drawing session was considered improper.¹⁹

Itinerant artists

Zoffany's painting also features another "outsider": the sculptor Chitqua (also known as Tan Chet-Qua, 1723–1796) from Canton (Guangzhou), who visited London in 1769–1772 and exhibited his clay models there.²⁰ This "exotic" guest attracted considerable interest among both art audiences and his peers in the British capital, as his portrait by John Hamilton Mortimer (1740–1779) testifies. The few extant works by Chitqua offer insight into the way in which the Chinese artist viewed his European contemporaries.

Such encounters with non-European artists were something of a rarity in pre-Modern Europe. European artists, on the other hand, often continued to travel even after they had completed their education. The reasons for and types of these voyages varied widely. Artists who had finished their official training were nonetheless eager to educate themselves further, and thus sought inspiration in famous centres of art. Personal experience of ancient art was in this respect an important element of their self-representation and market presence. The Netherlandish painter Maarten van Heemskerk (1498–1574) spent the years 1532–1537 in Rome, where he found employment in the ateliers of local painters (including Antonio da Sangallo the Younger (1484–1546)) and gave himself over to the study of ancient art, as evidenced by the large number of sketches of ancient buildings and sculptures he left behind.²¹ The long-term impact of this stay abroad is clear from a self-portrait that he made almost two decades after his return to Haarlem, showing him against a background of the Colosseum in Rome.

Van Heemskerk is one of countless international artists who travelled to Italy, some of them with the hope of winning lucrative contracts there and being able to settle there. The Netherlanders among them in the Early Modern Age were particularly keen travellers.²² Probably the most successful of them was the sculptor Jean de Boulogne (1529–1608) of Douai in Flanders, who is better known under his Italianized name Giovanni da Bologna, or Giambologna.²³ As court sculptor to the Medicis and a member of the Florence Accademia, he attained a level of mastery, particularly in his bronzes, that caused his works to be some of the most sought-after in Europe. The Medicis, who were great patrons of the arts, leveraged Giambologna’s talent in the service of their political interests. A strictly limited number of his bronzes were dispatched as diplomatic gifts to both allied and rival courts, thereby spreading both his fame and that of his art-loving patrons.²⁴ At the same time, they also functioned as media of art technology transfer; they were admired the world over above all for what was at that time the unique perfection of their bronze casting.

The example of the successful migrant artist Giambologna is characteristic for one more reason. His fame drew other young artists to Florence, and the atelier of this great master in the Palazzo Vecchio grew to become an important centre for exchange and education, as well as a springboard for their further careers. Giambologna's former colleagues and students, who went on to win employment at the courts of Europe, contributed to the dissemination of his style. Alongside Italians such as Pietro Tacca (1577–1640), many of Giambologna's compatriots were also engaged in his studio: Pierre Franqueville (1548–1615) of Cambrai was later appointed sculpteur du roi to Henry IV of France (1553–1610),²⁵ Adriaen de Vries from Den Haag (ca. 1556–1626) was summoned to Prague by Rudolf II, Holy Roman Emperor (1552–1612)[],²⁶ and Hubert Gerhard (1550–1620) from 's-Hertogenbosch entered the service of William V, Duke of Bavaria.²⁷

The presence of so many Netherlanders in Giambologna's studio and at the court in Prague testifies to a strong alliance between northern artists abroad, something that tends to be characteristic for artistic diasporas of various nationalities.²⁸ Immigrant artists often form into closed groups that in many cases pose considerable competition for the local talent. This was the case, for instance, with the colony of Italian master builders and sculptors that dominated the art scene in Krakow in the 16th century.²⁹

Immigrants could often count on the support of their compatriots as clients. It is this mechanism that is presumed to have functioned in the same city in the 15th century: the abovementioned sculptor Veit Stoß is thought to have received the lucrative commission for the retable on the high altar in St Mary's Church on Krakow's Main Market Square in 1477 thanks to the influence of the Southern German (chiefly Nuremberg) merchants who had set up branches of their commercial operations there and had come to occupy important positions on the city council. Even after Stoß's return to Nuremberg (in 1496), he clearly remained in contact with his Krakow network. Testimony to this is the commission that he received for a wooden model for the epitaph of the Italian humanist and professor of the Krakow Academy Philippus Bonaccursius, called Callimachus (1437–1496). The epitaph was cast in bronze in the Nuremberg atelier of Peter Vischer and sent to Krakow to be installed in the Dominican church there.³⁰ This case demonstrates that artist mobility, as well as creating transregional networks, also gave rise to considerable mobility of artworks themselves, thereby intensifying cultural exchange on the European scale.

Nonetheless, not all migrant artists could count on the support of their compatriots. Some were 'lone wolves', who had to face up to opposition from local master craftspeople alone. In 1670, the ivory and amber carver Christoph Maucher (1642–1707) from Schwäbisch Gmünd settled in Danzig (Gdańsk), an artistic amber-processing centre. In spite of numerous protests from members of the Danzig Guild of Amber Turners against the activity of this talented immigrant, Maucher ran a successful atelier in the Baltic commercial metropolis, and supplied the neighbouring courts in Berlin, Warsaw and Vienna with small-scale ivory and amber sculpture.³¹

Beside wanderlust, the desire to develop one's skills in renowned centres of art, and the prospect of winning a lucrative engagement at the court of a ruler who appreciated good art, there were yet other reasons why artists left their homelands. These were quite often negative factors, such as insufficient commissions from local patrons owing to strong competition on the labour market, economic crises, war, or persecution. Hence labour migration became a structural feature of several European art regions. From the early Middle Ages until the Early Modern Age, master builders, stonemasons, and stucco workers from the Lake Como region (thus known as maestri comacini) left their homeland to seek employment in Northern Italy, and Central and Northern Europe. Such itinerant artisans, who often travelled in groups, sometimes as whole families, transferred technical construction know-how and stylistic innovations to distant regions, and this made them highly attractive to foreign clients.³² In 1561, the Stuttgart master constructor Aberlin Tretsch (ca. 1500–1577) reported to Duke Christoph von Württemberg (1515–1568) thus about the maestri comacini:

[They] come, then, in springtime, descending upon the land like storks, do not wish to work for the local masters as journeymen, but must nonetheless be paid well. In the autumn and wintertime, they travel forth with their money-pouches full, leaving the poor masters in the land alone with their complaints.³³

In fact, not all the maestri comacini returned to their homeland every winter. Some travelled from court to court in the hope of landing attractive commissions. The Parr-Niurion family, builders from Bissone near Lugano, began their (documented) art travels in Silesia, went on to Mecklenburg, and ended in Sweden. The castles and palaces they built in Brieg (Brzeg, 1548–1557), Schwerin (1558–1573), and Kalmar (1574–1582) demonstrated the ability of these specialists to tailor their work to the wishes and tastes of local clients.³⁴

One example of a large-scale artist migration initiated by religious persecution, war, and the ensuing economic crisis was the mass exodus of Netherlanders in the first decades of the Eighty Years' War (1568–1648). In this context, the words of the Spanish agent Caspar de Castillo, who visited Antwerp in 1585 to seek assistants for the sculptor Leone Leoni (1509–1590), are telling: "nowhere in all the states are there practitioners of this art [sculpture], due to the long war".³⁵ This loss for the (chiefly southern) Netherlands precipitated the rise of other centres, such as Amsterdam, which evolved into a global metropolis and a preeminent centre of the arts in the 17th century, above all as a result of immigration. Netherlandish artists also found safety and enthusiastic clients in Germany, Denmark, England, and Poland, whose rulers were only too glad to take in qualified specialists. This movement had a decisive influence on the development of the European Late Renaissance north of the Alps.³⁶

Recipients of art as actors of exchange

Other important actors in the European art exchange were of course the recipients of that art. These were primarily rulers and nobles, for whom the display of splendour, by means including possession and connoisseurship of art, was an important element of their ducal and aristocratic self-image and representation of power. Francis I (1494–1547) recognized the potential of Italian art for the furtherance of his political aims during his campaigns in Italy. By inviting Italian artists to Amboise (Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519)) and Fontainebleau,³⁷ and acquiring Italian masterpieces (by Raphael (1483–1520), Titian (1490–1576), and Michelangelo (1475–1564)), he succeeded in putting France on the map of the European Renaissance. He was also impressed by the unique work of artists from the north.³⁸

Some European rulers were passionate patrons and collectors of art, and they made a particular contribution to cultural transfer. By keeping a carefully selected corps of contemporary artists and scientists from a range of backgrounds at his Prague court, and building his network of art agents who sourced artworks, natural curiosities from the New World, and scientific instruments for him, Emperor Rudolf II (1552–1612) created a unique intellectual milieu. His renowned Kunstkammer evolved into a material expression of his highly individual taste and understanding of art, and at the same time a reflection of the expansion of the world in the age of the great voyages of discovery.³⁹

The bourgeoisie, which was becoming increasingly emancipated in the Early Modern Age, was keen to emulate the forms of artistic representation used by the nobility.⁴⁰ A prime example in this respect is the Fuggers, an Augsburg merchant family whose representatives were skilled at leveraging art as an instrument for generating prestige, particularly after they were raised to the nobility (1511).⁴¹ By means of their global networks, they were able to source inspiration for their art commissions from the abundance of the European Renaissance and the luxury goods becoming available from the New World. They were also known as art agents for their high-ranking clients, such as the dukes of Bavaria. One piece of evidence for this status is the following object: a small box containing tapestry portraits depicting the children of the heir apparent, William V (1548–1626), Maximilian and Christina, gifted to his parents, Duke Albrecht (1528–1579) and Anna of Bavaria (1528–1590). The decoration of the container was crafted from a number of exotic materials (ivory, coral, lapis lazuli, pearls, and rubies), which had probably been acquired by Hans Fugger (1531–1598) in Venice. It was made by an international team of artists: the design by the painter Friedrich Sustris (ca. 1540–1600), born in Italy to Netherlandish emigrants, and recommended to the art aficionado William V also by Hans Fugger.⁴² The ivory carving, a rare skill at that time, was entrusted to the Milanese Giovanni Ambrogio Maggiore (1550–1598).⁴³ The filigree reliefs in coral and lapis lazuli were executed by the stone carver Valentin Drausch (1546–ca. 1610) of Strasbourg.⁴⁴ The miniature tapestry portraits also required a highly specialized skill that was known above all in the Netherlands, and so this task was given to the Brussels tapissier Jan de la Groze (documented in Munich in the period 1575–1583).⁴⁵ This diminutive piece, which seems to have been made for the family circle, is nonetheless a reflection of the pan-European network of the Bavarian dukes and their bankers, the Fuggers, as well as of the global circulation of luxury goods and resources. 

The European elites also travelled, so availing themselves of the opportunity to experience the art of other lands at first hand, and to expand their own collections. In 1624–1625, the Polish crown prince Ladislaus Vasa (1595–1648) undertook an incognito grand tour through Austria and Southern Germany to Italy, and on to the Southern Netherlands. In Antwerp, he had a portrait of himself made in the atelier of Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1640), visited the famous publishing house run by Christophe Plantin (1514–1589), and toured the art collection belonging to Cornelis van der Geest (1575–1638).⁴⁶ This latter visit was documented in a painting depicting the renowned collection and van der Geest's high-ranking guests.⁴⁷ On his return to Warsaw, Ladislaus had his own Kunstkabinett and the many treasures he had amassed on his travels immortalized in a painting.

It was not only prominent merchants and merchant bankers such as the Fuggers for whom collecting served as a medium of self-representation and mark of social advancement. The bourgeois middle classes and the petty nobility also contributed significantly to the cultural exchange in Europe and beyond, increasingly well equipped to engage in the intellectual discourse through their academic education, and familiarized with the wider world thanks to the Grand Tour (also known in German as the Kavalierstour). The lawyer and later mayor of Danzig Bartłomiej Schachmann (1559–1614) undertook a peregrinatio academica and Kavalierstour through Germany, France, and Italy, followed also by travels around the Ottoman Empire.⁴⁸ In the course of his voyages, he amassed an extensive collection of art, books, and curios, and recorded his impressions from his travels to the Orient in a fascinating travelogue.⁴⁹

Mobile artworks

Artworks have always been objects of desire, due to their aesthetic qualities, their material value, a particular production technique, their provenance, or their history. The fact that they served as instruments for the legitimization of power and social positioning increased their mobility and thereby also the transcultural exchange that they initiated. The expense and effort devoted to having such monumental ancient Egyptian or Roman relics (such as pillars or obelisks) transported to Europe and integrated into new construction projects (e.g. the Palatine Chapel in Aachen) or urban spaces (squares in Rome or Paris), testifies to both their immense inherent symbolic potential and the desire to learn more about the unfamiliar through acquisition.⁵⁰

Luxury products such as Chinese porcelain, Venetian glass, or furniture from the Paris Boulle marquetry atelier were seen not only as aesthetic objets d'art in and of themselves but also as media showcasing an exclusive form of know-how unique to one specific place. Possession of such pieces thereby intimated a worldliness and at once access to resources and the attendant knowledge only accessible to an elite stratum. Exhibited in representative rooms or included in collections, such objects assumed a new context and were subject to an interpretation that gives an indication of how they were perceived. One good example of such transcultural framing is seen in Chinese porcelain vases, which in Europe were embellished with gilded silver. The purpose of such goldsmithing refinements was to adapt the vessels, which were often without handles, to the uses to which their European recipients were accustomed, to emphasize the aesthetic quality of the porcelain through the contrast with the shiny metal and thus to increase their value, and to unify sets of diverse pieces.⁵¹ Such framing gestures were undoubtedly an expression of appreciation and an active means of taking possession, which led to the creation of hybrid objects.

Mobile materials

Art materials themselves could also travel, and thereby spin many-layered, multi-vectored fabrics binding cultures together.⁵² To make the pigment ultramarine, for instance, needed for the most intensive blue tones in painting, the mineral lapis lazuli was needed, and this occurs in the necessary quality only in Afghanistan. Thus it was imported from Central Asia at great expense and effort, and its distant origins are recorded in the name of the pigment (Lat. ultramarinus – overseas).⁵³

The provenance of the materials was not necessarily always foremost in the minds of the beholders, however. The Netherlands, not a country with significant supplies of wood, had been importing weathered oak from the Baltic states since the Middle Ages for shipbuilding, construction, and the needs of its art industry (panel painting and sculpture).⁵⁴ As a result of the centuries-long tradition of use of Baltic oak in art produced by Netherlandish workshops, and thanks to the renown they enjoyed, this material came to be more strongly associated with the centre of processing than with its region of origin. In the contract for production of an altarpiece for the chapel in Barcelona City Hall concluded with Lluís Dalmau (ca. 1400–1460), his clients specifically stipulated the use of Flanders oak. In his Virgin of the Counsellors, this painter, who was sent by King Alfonso V (1396–1458) to Flanders in 1431 to study the revolutionary painting technique used by painters there, referenced both the characteristic Old Netherlandish style of painting and the materials and techniques employed in it.⁵⁵

The art market as a factor in exchange

The fact that Spanish clients were so well informed about the qualities of Netherlandish art is a function of the unprecedented reach of the art market in the Low Countries. The Southern Netherlands in the 15th and 16th centuries were a producer of luxury goods – e.g. tapestries, church furnishings such as carved wooden altarpieces,⁵⁶ and prints affordable for a broader public,⁵⁷ both as individual commissions and as serially produced runs for anonymous foreign clients. Netherlandish ateliers were able to reach a broad, diverse client base abroad because they had access to the logistical and financial infrastructure of the commercial metropolises of Bruges, Ghent, or Antwerp. This was further supported by the emergence of early forms of distribution, such as the year-round art market (e.g. the Dominican Pand in Antwerp) or art lotteries, as well as the gradual evolution of the profession of specialized art trader.⁵⁸ In the Northern Netherlands, particularly in Amsterdam, which was booming, and in the 17th century emerged as an art and commercial metropolis, this tradition was continued.⁵⁹ From the 18th century on, however, the most desirable items (furniture, fittings, or clothing) came from Paris. The fact that the French capital was able to rise to the status of centre of the European art and luxury goods market was due not only to the influential role of the royal court there but also to the innovative production and marketing strategies of its marchands-merciers.⁶⁰ The catalogues printed in Paris detailing the luxury merchandise to be had there drew international visitors in and disseminated an image of the city as a fashionable, sophisticated forum for art.⁶¹ 

Art looting

Artworks travelled not only thanks to an efficiently organized art market and demand from foreign clients; they were also stolen in all kinds of circumstances. The story of the Last Judgement triptych by Hans Memling (ca. 1430–1494) may be cited here as an example representative of thousands of other artworks: in its over five-hundred-year history, it has been relocated several times as a result of various types of art looting. Made around 1467 in the Bruges workshop of this master from Seligenstadt to a commission by Angelo di Jacopo Tani (1415–1492), the plenipotentiary of the Medici Bank in Bruges, this altarpiece was painted for the St Michael Chapel in Badia Fiesolana near Florence. The galley that was to have shipped the work to Italy, however, was hijacked in 1473 by another vessel from Danzig (now Gdańsk, Poland), and its captain, Paul Beneke (ca. 1440–1480), gifted the looted retable to the City of Danzig to be displayed in St Mary’s Church. Despite interventions from the highest instances – the Duke of Burgundy, Charles the Bold (1433–1477), and Pope Sixtus IV (1414–1484) – the work was not returned to its rightful owner.⁶² The renown of this masterpiece, which was admired by the many visitors to the commercial metropolis on the Baltic, spread, and ambitious art collectors such as Emperor Rudolf II and Tsar Peter the Great (1672–1725), offered Danzig City Council vast sums of money for it, but in vain.

Not until 1807, after the conquest of Danzig by the French army, was the piece confiscated by Vivant Denon (1747–1825), who masterminded the looting of artworks for the Napoleonic regime, and taken back to Paris for the Musée Napoléon, where it once again became the object of great interest and admiration. After Napoleon’s defeat, The Last Judgement was restituted forthwith, and in 1815 it was taken to Berlin. In the Prussian capital there was likewise no shortage of parties who expressed their interest in keeping it, but they were all decisively repulsed by Danzig City Council,⁶³ and Memling’s masterpiece returned to the Baltic city in 1816. This was not to be its final journey, however. During World War II, it was removed to Thüringen for its own protection, where it was discovered after the war by the Red Army and sent to Leningrad (St Petersburg), to be exhibited in the Hermitage. When it was returned to Poland during the Thaw in 1956 and restored, it did not go back to its original home in St Mary’s Church, but was placed in the National Museum in Gdańsk, where it remains on display to this day. Memling’s Last Judgement is thus an artwork whose exceptional artistic qualities have for centuries rendered it a vehicle for the desires and demands of a range of actors, and which in its many roles – as purely an object of value, as a valuable facet of a local identity, and as an element of hegemonic culture politics – triggered diverse cultural interactions.⁶⁴

The looting of cultural assets in wartime, today deemed inacceptable – despite the fact that it continues to happen – was sanctioned by the right of the conqueror, which had been recognized since Antiquity and was legitimized by legal scholars in the Early Modern Age.⁶⁵ The plundering of art treasures was a particularly effective method of humiliating the vanquished and visualizing military triumph. In the Thirty Years War (1618–1648), looting of such goods was frequent, widespread, and committed by all parties: the capturing of the Bibliotheca Palatina (1622) by the armies of the Catholic League and its removal from Heidelberg to Rome;⁶⁶ the theft of Rudolf II’s famous Prague collection on the personal initiative of the Swedish queen Christine (1626–1689);⁶⁷ or the sack of the Gonzaga collection in Mantua (1630) are significant examples in this context.⁶⁸

Extensive and systematic looting of artworks also took place during the Napoleonic Wars.⁶⁹ The appropriation and looting by colonial powers of objects of particular significance for the identity of indigenous cultures,⁷⁰ and the plundering of art by the Nazi and Soviet regimes during World War II were further, though sadly not the last examples of this age-old practice. While they must of course be decisively denounced, it is, paradoxically, undeniable that such pillaging did contribute to a more even distribution of art treasures across Europe. Integrated in new collections, redistributed by the art market, and presented to a new public, they stimulated cultural transfer and laid the foundations for the development of modern museums. Nonetheless, an awareness of the dubious basis of many European institutions of culture is necessary for full transparency surrounding the history of their collections.

Conclusion

The arts have for centuries been one of the most important platforms for cultural exchange both within Europe and beyond. The travels of artists and clients alike, whether forced or voluntary, gave rise to encounters with other actors in the art system. This produced an exchange of artistic ideas, forms, materials, and techniques that left lasting traces in both the output and perception of art. Artworks themselves, both those marketed or gifted on a voluntary basis and those that were plundered, also had an impact that reached beyond the culture of their origins to shape also those into which they were relocated. European art can thus be seen as a reflection of the continent’s intercultural integration.
The arts are in constant flux, but their propensity to cross borders and push boundaries remains a constant. The mobility of artists and their works, together with the global expansion of art markets, continues to be a considerable factor in the intensification of transcultural exchange today. The other side of this coin is, however, that globalization often leads to the loss of local flavour. Contemporary artists today tend to pay far more attention to their status as intermediaries or outsiders looking in on more than one culture in addition to their migration experience than was the case in pre-modern periods. And even if the conclusions we can draw from such ego-documents cannot automatically be applied to historical circumstances, examining contemporary art certainly broadens our view of the artistic interactions of the past.

Aleksandra Lipińska