A Corsair History of Sculpture: Abducting Italian Fountains in the Early Modern Spanish Mediterranean

This talk explores the transformative power of art circulation by analysing surprising narratives of abducted fountains across the early modern Mediterranean under the Spanish political influence. Stories of Italian fountains kidnapped by corsairs while being shipped to the Iberian Peninsula, stolen by Spanish viceroys, or amazingly rescued during the Battle of Lepanto against the Ottoman Empire will be the core of this conversation. These narratives reveal a widespread desire for fountains throughout the Mediterranean, which generated a sequence of geographical dislocations and cultural translations. Sometimes demonstrable facts, sometimes charming legends linked to the suggestive visual and political power of water, these episodes disclose the life of monumental art in motion and subvert the traditional reading of fountains as site-specific objects.