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Symposium

September 28 – September 30

 180 Doe Library, UC Berkeley
Berkeley, CA 94720

Mongolian Buddhism Conference

9:00 am–6:00 pm

This three day conference on Mongolian Buddhism, brings together experts from the US, Europe, and Asia. As part of this conference, art historian Uranchimeg Tsultem will discuss the Buddhist arts of Mongolia. Please check http://events.berkeley.edu/index.php/calendar/sn/ieas.html?event_ID=109252 for details.

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Symposium

September 29

 180 Doe Library, UC Berkeley
Berkeley, CA 94720

Mongolian Buddhism Conference

10:00 am–5:30 pm

This three day conference on Mongolian Buddhism, brings together experts from the US, Europe, and Asia. As part of this conference, art historian Uranchimeg Tsultem will discuss the Buddhist arts of Mongolia. Please check http://events.berkeley.edu/index.php/calendar/sn/ieas.html?event_ID=109252 for details.

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Symposium

September 30

 180 Doe Library, UC Berkeley
Berkeley, CA 94720

Mongolian Buddhism Conference

10:00 am–1:00 pm

Among the scheduled speakers are:

Agata BAREJA-STARZYNSKA, University of Warsaw
Brian BAUMANN, UC Berkeley
Isabelle CHARLEUX, National Centre for Scientific Research
Jacob DALTON, UC Berkeley
Johan ELVERSKOG, Southern Methodist University
Caroline HUMPHREY, King’s College, Cambridge
Matthew KING, UC Riverside
Erdenebaatar OCHIR, UC Santa Barbara
Weirong SHEN, Renmin University of China
Uranchimeg TSULTEM, UC Berkeley
Vesna WALLACE, UC Santa Barbara

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Lecture

October 2

 180 Doe Library, UC Berkeley
Berkeley, CA 94720

The Question of Tartar Textiles: Dante, Cangrande I della Scala, and the Vatican Archive

4:00 pm–6:00 pm

Speaker: Mariachiara Gasparini, Santa Clara University

The Chinese-Islamic cultural encounter in Central Asia found its maximum expression with the Pax Mongolica in territories that, although vast in area, became similar in aesthetic culture, and brought into existence a unique “dress code” among various social classes from China to Italy. Similarly to the Tang, in the thirteenth century, the Mongols established their domain with a multicultural policy which was inclusive of all those artistic and religious processes that created a Eurasian production of textiles and costumes. Often found under the name of “Tartar,” these compounds appear very similar in style although different in technique and material.

Before the Mongols, however, the Crusades had already created an occasion for the four Italian Maritime Republics to establish their own colonies in Eastern territories, and to trade textiles and other luxury objects. Original meanings of patterns and inscriptions were often lost in translation, transmission, and re-interpretation of the textiles traded in Trans Mediterranean areas. It was in Southern Italy that those items were first acquired and reproduced, not without arousing astonishment in the Italian society, which described them as strange (strani) and marvelous (meravigliosi).

The Royal Ṭirāz Workshop established in Palermo, possibly around the twelfth century, was a major step in the advent of the Italian textile production that moved only between the end of the thirteenth century and the beginning of the fourteenth to Lucca (when, coincidentally, a few Italian merchants reached mainland China), and Tartar patterns were reinterpreted as pure decorative or “exotic motifs.” Same patterns began to appear not only on textile grounds but also on paintings and as architectural elements.

Through a visual and textual analysis, based on Eastern and Western textiles, and written sources preserved in the Vatican Archive in Rome, this paper analyzes the so-recorded panni tartarici, which still today, no without questions, represent an example of pre-modern cultural and artistic interaction between various Eurasian societies that, thanks to the Mongols, found a universal style.

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