Rustic figurines of a resigned-looking Virgin clutching her child may have no obvious literary or artistic merit to us today. But understanding what they meant to the spiritual lives of their owners can offer a glimpse of the human hopes and fears that people have, for centuries, invested in inanimate objects.
An exhibition of ‘treasured possessions’ from the 15th to the 18th centuries reveals how we first fell in love with shopping, and takes us back to an age when our belongings were made by hand and passed down through the generations.
The early modern period (1500-1800) saw a surge in the keeping of records. A conference later this week (9-10 April 2014) at the British Academy will look at the origins of the archives that shape our understanding of history. We asked ten of the speakers to tackle some fundamental questions.
The notion of the Renaissance as a ‘secular age’ is to be challenged by three University of Cambridge researchers after securing €2.3m funding from the European Research Council.
Why did Renaissance shoppers fill their baskets with rosaries, crucifixes, Christ-dolls and devotional paintings? A new study by historian Dr Mary Laven investigates the significance of Catholic clutter, as she explains.
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