<i>Provenance and Possession: Acquisitions from the Portuguese Empire in Renaissance Italy</i> by K. J. P. Lowe

Would you like to own some moon rocks? How about dinosaur teeth? Thus is the allure of the rare, the precious, the hard-to-find objects that drive some collectors. In fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Europe, such collectables arrived in Lisbon from the global Portuguese empire. This remarkable and noteworthy work traces their origins and ultimate journeys to Renaissance Italy, chiefly Florence and Rome. As the author points out, this connection between Portuguese global expansion and Renaissance Italy, long a neglected topic, has just recently become a focus of inquiry; Lowe firmly demonstrates that link and its importance. Under scrutiny here are both the tangible and the intangible aspects of this connection.Based on meticulous archival research and material cultural studies, this work encompasses an impressive array of subjects, reflecting the nature of the people and objects under consideration. To cite just a few, Lowe draws on the early history of Portuguese global expansion, the history of cartography, the Atlantic slave trade, West African naming traditions, linguistics, Mediterranean trade routes, and numerous aspects of social history in Lisbon and various Italian city states. Lowe has uncovered sets of previously unused documentation (largely in Florence) and combined them with the latest scholarship from archaeology, anthropology, art history, and museum studies to craft this thorough and comprehensive examination.The work is organized into chapters on people and the objects being transferred at three distinct times, based on different sets of documentation from the 1450s to the 1590s. Lowe then uses the differences in time to investigate any changes in buying patterns. To glean information regarding enslaved Africans in Italy, Lowe used records from a Florence orphanage to identify the African or mixed-race children and then juxtaposed these results with tax records to identify the possible parents. Objects are easier to discuss, using archival evidence to the largest extent possible linked with descriptive analyses by anthropologists and curators. As the author states, “this book [is] … an exercise in context enhancement: in minute focusing on the documents and objects in order to extract as much as possible from them about the known context in a period-appropriate fashion” (1–2).As Lowe points out, in today’s world of collectors, provenance is paramount to the value of an item, yet Lowe surprisingly concludes that provenance was relatively unimportant (for most of the objects under discussion): “Knowledge of provenance was not central enough to the transaction to be recorded, and therefore can be said not to have been valued” (290). Furthermore, Lowe posits “This … could help explain why the Italian Renaissance and the Portuguese expansion have so infrequently been looked at in tandem” (291). This does not take away from the fascinating array of objects and the stories of enslaved people that Lowe has examined.This work suggests a complementary study with a distinct focus: Russell-Wood’s A World on the Move, which discusses goods (but not people) moving around the early modern Portuguese empire.1 The difference between the two, of course, is that Russell-Wood discusses movement within the Portuguese Empire and Lowe discusses people and goods leaving it. Lowe briefly mentions articles moving in the other direction, out of Europe. Mechanical clocks as gifts for the high and mighty in China (in a later period) and Italian glass beads in West Africa are two well-known examples. Focus on this direction, of course, would require another book.It is tempting to look beyond the beautifully carved elephant tusks (oliphants) from the Kingdom of the Kongo, parrots, monkeys, and other small creatures from Africa and Brazil, porcelain, and other curiosities under study here. What well-known goods and items did not make these shopping lists and why? Sugar, silk, and precious gems (like emeralds and rubies), three well-known luxury items, had other specific merchants, buyers, and established trade routes.The author is quite comprehensive in discussing related and somewhat tangential aspects of the people and objects under review. Lowe’s work stirs the imagination and suggests unforeseen connections. For example, when discussing the necessity of purchasing enslaved male Africans in Lisbon to work the galleys of Florence (and Lowe finds them very expensive), how is it possible that galley slaves could not be more cheaply obtained closer to home? Powers that used galleys normally relied on convicts and war captives; how does one explain this lack of supply?Lowe has presented a wealth of material and information, best appreciated slowly in small segments. Readers of this work will be ushered into the palaces of wealthy Italian patrons to enjoy rare and exotic possessions purchased in the global emporium that was early modern Lisbon.