Rarità dalle molte sfaccettature: le gemme e i loro materiali nel periodo premoderno / The multiple Facets of Rarity: Studies on Gems and Gemstones in the Premodern Period

Prejudices against preciousness and the role of materials have substantially contributed to the low ranking of gems in twentieth-century art scholarship, along with the longstanding association between these media and cultual, auratic or apparently less innovative cultural spheres, and together with questionable disciplinary distinctions. However, concepts such as wonder, treasure, art and art collection have been reassessed substantially in the last decades. Moreover, the growing interest in issues such as mobility, materiality, the itineraries of objects, technological transfers, the alleged fluidity of pre-global culture and the diversity of the pre-modern paradigms of knowledge opens up new avenues for research on gemstones and objects in these media (or similar to them, or decorated with them). Focusing on gems and complex artifacts in terms of rarity can be a more promising approach than looking on them in terms of timeless preciousness. The essays collected in this issue explore the ties between gems/gemstones and cultural, epistemic and commercial interests, or the (dis)continuity of the anthropic practices that involve these artifacts and media. Gems/gemstones can also contribute to qualify social interactions within families, ethnicized groups, professional or diplomatic networks. They can interplay with technological and typological innovations, interfere with other kinds of conspicuous artifacts/media/ware and their accumulations, as well as highlight the erudite interests that brought to the specific arrangement of the scholarly corpora that included cameos and intaglios.