ABSTRACT

Among the most conspicuous examples of cultural transfer from the early modern era (the period before c. 1800) are objects that are now usually treated as works of art. Trade in luxury items such as these also constituted important cultural markets. From the late sixteenth century works both with secular and with sacred content, including medals, manuscripts and other parchments with devotional illuminations, and especially prints, probably in vast quantities, were exported from Europe to the Americas and to South Asia, China and Japan. Although not in such numbers, paintings and some important pieces of sculpture were sent abroad from Europe as well. In Asia probably the most noteworthy of these was the seventeenth-century tomb of Francis Xavier by Giovan Battista Foggini that was made in Florence and eventually shipped to Goa.2