In Courtly Mediators, Leah R. Clark investigates the exchange of a range of materials and objects, including metalware, ceramic drug jars, Chinese porcelain, and aromatics, across the early modern Italian, Mamluk, and Ottoman courts. She provides a new narrative that places Aragonese Naples at the center of an international courtly culture, where cosmopolitanism and the transcultural flourished, and in which artists, ambassadors, and luxury goods actively participated. By articulating how and why transcultural objects were exchanged, displayed, copied, and framed, she provides a new methodological framework that transforms our understanding of the Italian Renaissance court. Clark's volume provides a multi-sensorial, innovative reading of Italian Renaissance art. It demonstrates that the early modern culture of collecting was more than a humanistic enterprise associated with the European roots of the Renaissance. Rather, it was sustained by interactions with global material cultures from the Islamic world and beyond.

Winner, 2025 Book Prize, Italian Art Society

‘Clark makes sophisticated arguments of considerable interest to art historians … in an effort to capture the complex geographical processes at work as objects move and change as they move, and how originating places, entrepots, and destinations change as objects move through them … Her book … is highly recommendable for those interested in the geographical turn in material cultural studies and in the intriguing and beautiful objects themselves.’

Elizabeth Baigent Source: Journal of Historical Geography

‘… Clark’s work will be of great benefit to future research on a wide range of topics, such as the cultural ramifications of the conquest of Otranto, the multi-layered complexity of transcultural exchanges between Italian and Hungarian courts, and the careers of individual artists like Costanzo da Ferrara who moved between Terrara, Naples and Istanbul in the 1470s and 1480s.’

Robert Brennan Source: Renaissance Studies

‘… invites a reassessment of how transfers and exchanges could occur beyond the interactions of artists and patrons, underscoring instead the tangible - sometimes immaterial - encounters that activated a visual culture of translations and transmutations.’

Cynthia Fang Source: RACAR

‘The book presents compelling new archival material, highlighting both the diverse nature of Renaissance material culture and its local ramifications. If the Islamic world plays a relatively small role in the book, the attention paid to the material and multisensorial implications of the objects and their spatial relationship with their environments provides an innovative reading of Italian Renaissance courts. It ultimately offers a methodological framework that overturns any lingering understanding of the Italian Renaissance as monolithic, strongly asserting its multicultural and global character.’

Federica Gigante Source: Renaissance Quarterly