Sarah Guérin:
Ivory Trade in the Age of Henry the Navigator: Shifting Worlds

What are the fundamental differences between medieval and Early Modern period? Many have indicated the revolutionary circulation of prints as the deciding factor distinguishing one period from the other. Yet the material substrate which presents such innovative iconographies and compositions can also be linked to seismic changes taking place on the social and political front. In this paper, I will examine morphological changes in the production of objects fabricated from elephant ivory towards the end of the fifteenth century and demonstrate how these changes in form are linked to the opening of the sea route along the West African coast during the age of the Portuguese Prince, Henry the Navigator (d. 1460). 

Sarah M. Guérin is Associate Professor of Medieval Art in the History of Art Department at the University of Pennsylvania. Her research centres on the material conditions of medieval art, with an emphasis on the socio-economic circumstances surrounding production and use, as well as the symbolic and affective potential of materials. These interests have led her to engage seriously with the material culture of Africa contemporary with the European Middle Ages, and especially the role trans-Saharan trade routes play in the medieval economic system. This research lead her to contributing, as a member of the steering committee and a catalogue author, to the award-wining exhibition Caravans of Gold, Fragments in Time: Art, Culture and Exchange across Medieval Saharan Africa, 2019-2022. In 2022, her monograph on French Gothic Ivories appeared with Cambridge University Press. The project that she presents at the KHI takes some of her concerns developed in regards to the Middle Ages and transposes them onto the dawn of the modern era.