The Pisa Griffin and the Mari-Cha Lion. Metalwork, Art, and Technology in the Medieval Islamicate Mediterranean
- Submitting institution
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School of Oriental and African Studies
- Unit of assessment
- 32 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
- Output identifier
- 26373
- Type
- B - Edited book
- DOI
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- Publisher
- Pacini Editore
- ISBN
- 9788869953064
- Open access status
- Out of scope for open access requirements
- Month of publication
- September
- Year of publication
- 2018
- URL
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- Supplementary information
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- Request cross-referral to
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- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
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- Forensic science
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- Criminology
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- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
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- Research group(s)
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- Proposed double-weighted
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- Reserve for an output with double weighting
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- Additional information
- This volume is the outcome of a lengthy collaborative research project conceptualized, initiated, and directed by Anna Contadini. Emerging out of her own earlier research on the Pisa Griffin, it has widened to include its companion piece, the Mari-Cha Lion, only recently made available to scrutiny, and to assess both within the wider context of Mediterranean mediaeval bronze casting and metalwork production. With contributions from 33 international scholars covering various areas of expertise through art history to metallurgy, it investigates, far more thoroughly than has been possible hitherto, the difficult and interconnected questions of date, provenance, production, function, agency and reception that surround these two bronzes, and also subjects to comparative assessment similar if smaller examples of Islamic metalwork, mainly of Spanish origin.
The work has been conceived, planned, and edited by Anna Contadini, who has, in addition, made various contributions to it. Two are introductory: a general survey of purpose and content (pp. 11-16) and a preface to the technical analyses (p. 83). Another two are jointly authored, one a physical description of the two bronzes (pp. 19-34), the other, drawing upon comparative material, an exploration of the technologies available that would have enabled them to function as sound-producing objects (pp. 63-75).
The final two are substantial single-authored chapters. One discusses the transformation of the Lucca Falcon (pp. 419-48), another Islamic bronze that, in a new transcultural setting, acquired a novel function. The other is a wide-ranging study (197-256) that not only reviews previous scholarship on the Griffin, but also presents new material for a provenance; examines the inscriptions as evidence for the connectedness of the two bronzes with other Islamicate material; proposes a new interpretation for its original function; and discusses its agency and reception in its new cultural environment.
- Author contribution statement
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- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
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