ABSTRACT
The chapter continues the theme of the importance of local identity by demonstrating that techniques that appear to be borrowed by Italians from Byzantine artisans in fact formed part of a long-lived local tradition from the time when parts of the Italian peninsula were part of the Byzantine Empire. Vanni shows the degree to which the technology and the aesthetics of stucco work in Byzantium, non-Byzantine Italy, and the Islamic world are technically analogous although not identical. She suggests that the parallels between Byzantium and Italy are not due to ‘borrowing’ but simple familiarity; we are dealing here with a set of ‘local’ traditions which have considerable mutual influence and which thus undermine the boundaries between ‘Byzantine’ and ‘non-Byzantine’. Vanni concludes that in eight-century Italy, the global was local.
