Russo, Alessandra. A New Antiquity: Art and Humanity as Universal,1400–1600

The global turn in art history is nothing new.Since the 1980s, scholars have sought to correct and enhance our understanding of art history through the reintroduction of non-European art and histories as complements to the established canon.This vital work, however, frequently relegates global peoples, narratives, and objects to a minor role as the exotic Other-a role that is easy to cut, avoid, or ignore.In A New Antiquity: Art and Humanity as Universal, 1400-1600, Alessandra Russo suggests a radical new theoretical approach that inextricably merges the New World into the Old through the idea that early modern humanists viewed artmaking, and specifically skilled artmaking, as a universal signifier of humanity and therefore a marker of equality across humankind.Therefore, rather than entering the European sphere as pure curiosities, or as evidence of primitivism, objects from the Americas, Africa, and Asia become integral to the understanding and development of humanity as a whole.As Russo states, "The evidence of such singular artifacts made by skillful hands and rational minds, in a previously unthinkable part of the Earth, prompted the redefinition of humanity, precisely as a universal artistic humanity wherever on Earth" (8).This approach, which Russo describes as "artifact-based humanism, " seeks to understand the deeper implications and applications of the objects that came to Europe through colonial expansion.Russo's approach creates a method of analysis that allows for broader (arguably, universal) applications, and it is not limited by a single object or point of contact.Rather than taking a geographic area, type of art, or specific historical event as her focus, Russo seeks to identify the broader impact of the movement of objects across the globe.Though not stated explicitly, Russo uses the colonial expansion of the Iberian world during the long sixteenth-century as a limiting boundary of her study.However, this boundary still allows Russo to consider complementary activities in the Italian peninsula and the movements of objects from New Spain into locations as varied as the Netherlands, Africa, Japan, and China.The five chapters of A New Antiquity build upon each other.Each of the first three chapters takes a single author and their primary text(s) as a focal