Shifting Significations of the Spolia Aesthetic

Conclusion Shifting Significations of the Spolia Aesthetic

In the eleventh to mid-twelfth century, the interdependence of trade and war existed in a delicate but transitory equilibrium for the Italian maritime cities. The lasting achievement of the military campaigns of this time period was the establishment of these mercantile centers as essential participants in Mediter- ranean commercial exchange. What the cities fought for so aggressively came to fruition as they firmly asserted their presence in markets across the sea, exchanging goods with Muslim territories and Byzantium alike. Ultimately, the Italian mercantile cities were so successful that their fiercest competition came from one another as they vied with increasing hostility for supremacy in Mediterranean trade. The strategic use of violence, then, remained an effective means to open markets, protect financial assets and sovereign territories, and eliminate competitors. The aesthetic of appropriation employed in these mercantile centers, with its multicultural references, luxurious and exotic materials, and conflation of time and place in alluding to past and foreign cultures simultaneously, mani- fested a civic identity for each city based on a sense of Mediterranean belonging. The openness of spolia allowed each city to reference the cultures and locales with the most symbolic significance; the Byzantine Empire, Muslim territories, and ancient Rome all featured prominently in defining a unique visual culture for each Italian town. The maritime republics displayed their Mediterranean belonging and connection to other cultures by using materials goods acquired along the sea as architectural decoration. This was an inclusive and cumulative aesthetic that celebrated the fluidity and permeability of cultural boundaries in the Mediterranean. The beauty and availability of spolia, combined with a seemingly boundless potential for redefinition and reinscription with new meanings, made them the ideal visual form to represent the Italian cities’ knowledge of and integration into a dynamic Mediterranean environment. The second half of the twelfth century brought some level of continuity but also significant change for the maritime republics and their place in this multicultural network. The merchants of Amalfi all but disappeared from maritime commerce but remained involved in local inland trade.1 Norman Sicily under King Roger ii and his successors became a flourishing kingdom, and Roger

1 Patricia Skinner, Medieval Amalfi and its Diaspora, 800–1250 (Oxford, 2013), addresses this shift in focus of Amalfitan trade.

194 Conclusion continued the military offensives against the Byzantine Empire undertaken by his predecessors while attempting to expand his territory into North Africa as well.2 Pisa and Genoa continued to fight incessantly over their commercial positions in the western Mediterranean until the late thirteenth century when the Genoese defeated the Pisan fleet at the Battle of Meloria in 1284; from that time forward Pisan mercantile interests remained almost exclusively in the western part of the sea. In the thirteenth century as well, a three-way competition developed between Pisa, Genoa, and Venice in eastern Mediterranean markets—Byzantium, the Crusader States, and Egypt—where alliances con- stantly shifted as each city sought to improve its own position at the expense of the others. It was this intense competition and fratricidal rivalry without any mitigating spiritual endeavors that altered the general perception of the Italian merchants, transforming them from “milites Christi” to “mali christiani.”3 In the art patronage of the Italian trading cities, the spolia aesthetic continued to play a central role, but instead of indexing Mediterranean relations, it became increasingly associated with local Italian concerns. The multivalence of spolia allowed for new readings of previously appropriated objects while new spolia/spoils came to adorn the civic monuments of these republics. In Pisa, for example, the use of bacini persisted until the fifteenth century, but the types of ceramics employed as decoration on the city’s churches shifted from Muslim products to locally produced Pisan wares; bacini thus became manifestations of local pride rather than international commerce.4 Pisa continued to display

2 Alex Metcalfe, The Muslims of Medieval Italy (Edinburgh, 2009), pp. 162–65; Charles Dalli, “Bridging Europe and Africa: Norman Sicily’s Other Kingdom,” in Bridging the Gaps: Sources, Methodology and Approaches to Religion in History, ed. Joaquim Carvalho (Pisa, 2008), pp. 77–93; David Abulafia, “The Norman Kingdom of Africa and the Norman Expeditions to Majorca and the Muslim Mediterranean,” Anglo-Norman Studies 7 (1985), 26–49. 3 Sylvia Schein, “From ‘Milites Christi’ to ‘Mali Christiani’: The Italian Communes in Western Historical Literature,” in I comuni italiani nel regno crociato di Gerusalemme, eds. Gabriella Airaldi and Benjamin Kedar (Genoa, 1986), pp. 681–89; David Abulafia, “Trade and Crusade, 1050–1250,” in Cross-cultural Convergences in the Crusader Period: Essays Presented to Aryeh Grabois on His Sixty-Fifth Birthday, eds. Michael Goodich et al. (New York, 1995), pp. 1–20, at p. 17. 4 For these local ceramics, known as “maiolica arcaica,” see Graziella Berti, Pisa: Le “maioliche arcaiche,” secc. xiii–xv (Museo Nazionale di San Matteo) (Florence, 1997), pp. 276–84; Marcella Giorgio, “Centri di produzione di maiolica arcaica in Toscana: Pisa, Lucca e Camaiore,” in Storie [di] Ceramiche 2: Maioliche “arcaiche,” ed. Marcella Giorgio (Florence, 2016), pp. 11–20; eadem, “La maiolica arcaica e le invetriate depurate di Pisa: nuove acqui- sizioni e approfondimenti alla luce dei più recenti scavi urbani (2000–2007),” in v Congresso nazionale di archeologia medievale, eds. Giuliano Volpe and Pasquale Favia (Florence, 2009), pp. 569–75.