Kunsthistorisch seminarie nr. 25: Western Europe on the Move: Mobilities, Networks, and Artistic Productions (14th-17th Centuries)

Between the late 14th and 16th centuries, Western Europe experienced an intensification of mobility that profoundly transformed artistic and cultural practices. The movements of artists, craftsmen, clergy, merchants, and intellectuals all contributed to the dissemination and reshaping of knowledge, models, and techniques. Far from coming to an end at the dawn of the modern era, these dynamics persisted and evolved in an increasingly interconnected European and extra-European context.

Princely courts were among the principal hubs of these mobilities, attracting creators from diverse backgrounds and fostering the emergence of transregional styles such as the International Gothic—an art of courts shaped by the political and cultural ambitions of the elites. Ecclesiastical networks, supported by their institutional structures, also played a key role in the circulation of people and works. In addition to these well-known vectors, merchants acted as crucial intermediaries: attentive to patrons’ tastes and local specificities, they encouraged the movement of artists and accompanied the rise of a genuine art market in the second half of the 15th century.

Other networks likewise contributed to these dynamics: workshops and artistic communities ensured the continuity of skills, while foreign residents in cities—sometimes organized into confraternities, such as the so-called “German Brotherhood” in Barcelona as early as the 1490s—played a decisive role in integration and the transmission of practices.

This study day aims to explore these mobilities and the structures that sustained them, in order to better understand how their intensification at the end of the Middle Ages—and their continuation into the modern period—helped shape the European cultural landscape in lasting ways.