Art and Its Geographies: Configuring Schools of Art in Europe (1550-1815)

The introduction to this edited collection traces the emergence of the notion of a school in artistic discourse, and the manifold ways in which it shaped our understanding of the geography of European art during the early modern period. It argues that the notion of a school was fundamentally unstable because it comprised heterogeneous definitions, was employed in a variety of media, and sparked competitive debate regarding the hierarchy of art and artists. Thus, this notion established a pluriform panorama of both distinct and interconnected artistic traditions within European art. Such a variegated panorama contrasts markedly with the essentialising fixations of the national school-including its nationalistic and racist excesses-which predominated during the modern period.