Enfilade

Mughal Artist, Europeans Bring Gifts to Shah-Jahan (July 1633), detail ca. 1635–50, 34 × 24 cm
(Royal Collection Trust, RCIN 1005025.t).

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From the Call for Papers (which includes French and Italian versions) . . .

Diplomatic Gifts in the Modern and Contemporary Eras:

Definitions, Changes, and Patrimonialisation on a Global Scale

French Academy in Rome – Villa Medici, Rome, 2-3 March 2026

Proposals due by 15 October 2025

The eloquent evidence of peaceful trade, diplomatic gifts have been the subject of significant research in recent decades. Following Marcel Mauss’s seminal work on the anthropology of gift-giving, historians of modern diplomacy (Frigo; Bély) have focused on the material and political contexts in which intercultural and interreligious exchanges have taken place. While connected history has taken significant objects as its landmarks (Subrahmanyam; Gruzinski; Cooke), art history (Castelluccio; Rado) has profitably focused on the relationships between diplomacy and trade, on technical and artistic transfers, and on circuits and actors, particularly from the perspective of the involvement of royal, imperial or national factories. Researchers have placed strong emphasis on case studies in specific areas of exchange or types of gifts. More recently, legal historians have analysed how contemporary regulations have sought to replace frequent corrupt practices with transparency.

Using connected, material and post-colonial art histories, as well as cultural anthropology and museography, this symposium wishes to better understand these ‘ambassador objects’ (Kasarhérou) in their semantic richness, materiality and temporalities, and to consider the fertile ‘rhizomes’ (Bachir Diagne) that they fertilise in other territories. The aim of this reflection is, first of all, to take a fresh look at the definitions and sometimes tenuous distinctions between diplomatic gifts, tributary presents and spoils of war, commemorative commissions or creations, as well as their different roles (symbolic, emotional, pacifying, political, etc.) in the institution of international relations and the ritualisation of exchanges, by combining especially anthropology and political history. The aim is to analyze, by comparing narratives, the status they have on both sides of the chain, in various contexts.

The cultural practice of friendship gifts immediately raises the question of the conditions under which they are commissioned and produced, as well as the symbolic value of the materials. As studies articulating history of diplomacy and history of trade (Zhao and Simon; Schaub; Guerzoni) have demonstrated, gifts solicit support from local skills and crafts, as well as factories, or innovative technologies, while also promoting, legitimising and celebrating the high level of mastery of their producers, echoing in this way the prosperity and perfect governance of the territory that produced them. Concerning the creators, they may be employed by the powerful, or even benefit, as autonomous artists, from competition between princes. In some cases, particularly in interfaith relations, the emissaries themselves may be involved in the creation of these gifts. Alongside the use of traditional Indigenous productions or commissioned works, the potential use of hybrid objects or ‘border objects’ will also be examined—objects that carry acclimated external cultures and embody multiple layers of meaning, such as dynastic gifts. By addressing the choice of objects and their materiality in the light of economic and socio-cultural phenomena, and without neglecting the history of religion and the weight of ideologies, the conference aims to compare the order processes, the methods of adaptation and the balance between norms and freedoms, by recontextualising practices and examining the underlying strategies of domination.

If the uniqueness of a ceremonial gift lies in the richness and sophistication of its message, which simultaneously represents the giver and is tailored to the recipient, in the magnificence of its execution or material, but also in the ritual of its presentation, the typologies of chosen objects are many: official portraits, carpets, militaria, tableware, naturalia, costumes, jewellery and watches, religious or apotropaic objects, or even animals and court dwarfs, etc. The presentations will explore a variety of cases and will pay particular attention to certain specific objects that are, by their very nature, diplomatic gifts, such as presentation portraits, medals, handsteinen, or peace pipes.

Considering the long history of diplomatic relations, the conference aims above all to fully analyse the evolving agency of gifts, from the strengthening of princely dynastic alliances to the consolidation of nation states, as well as the way in which the objects offered construct and potentially reconfigure links. How do these objects fit into a policy of gift-giving, whether serial or renewed over time? According to what rituals must these witnesses, which seal the agreement, themselves reactivate the alliance (counter-gift, reconnection journey, etc.)? How are they perceived and understood a few years after they were offered, and when they become part of discourses on patrimonialisation, especially in places dedicated to their collective conservation, which are themselves, in turn, active tools? What reflections about space and display accompany these objects, with what staging, visual strategies, and what use of materials during the diplomatic encounter, and once they have been deposited with the recipient? What discourses and narratives do they represent? Furthermore, what happens to gifts that do not reach their intended recipients, and what is their symbolic impact? Some gifts, testimonies of peaceful ties, have been appropriated by other dominant, colonising or occupying powers: what were the sometimes complex circuits, cultural or propagandistic issues, and effects of semantic transfers?

The conference, hosted by the Académie de France à Rome – Villa Médicis, will also benefit from visits to relevant sites and collections and from a comparison with contemporary practices of protocol exchanges. It will debate from polycentric perspectives, encouraging cross-views on the phenomena and analysing sources bilaterally or multilaterally. Particularly welcome, without exclusions, are contributions focusing on enlarged geographical frameworks (from the Viceroyalty of New Spain to the Mughal or Chinese courts, from Versailles or Venice to Topkapi or Damascus, from the court of the Oba to that of Portugal, etc.) and shedding light on the following themes:
• Diplomatic gifts, their variations, and definitions
• The conditions under which gifts were made and the role of intermediaries (artists, princes, ministers, diplomats, protocol officers, building superintendents, merchants, etc.)
• The object’s lives, its staging and locations (palaces, studioli, cabinets of curiosities, galleries, official salons, etc.), ephemeral decorations, and architecture
• The meanings of the offering in context and its impact on international relations, the links between diplomatic gifts and commercial or religious strategies
• Analysis of representations, in all their forms, of exchanges of gifts (diplomatic embassies, Christian missions, ecumenical meetings, alliances, dynastic celebrations, translation ceremonies, etc.)
• The variety of commemorations of the gift (including discursive and spectacular forms) and cross-analysis of visual, literary, and historical narratives
• Patrimonialisation of diplomatic gifts: from princely collections to missionary, ethnographic, national, presidential, or transnational museums
• The evolution of gifts in relation to diplomatic practices (codification, professionalisation)
• Aborted gifts and unexpected captures, the authentication and falsification of diplomatic gifts with their material traces, provenance research on diplomatic gifts
• Diplomatic donations in the context of regulatory practices (sumptuary laws, transparency policies, etc.)

Interested researchers should send a proposal for a paper with a title and abstract (maximum 3000 characters) and a biographical presentation (maximum 5–10 lines) with their current affiliation to the following addresses by 15 October 2025: natachapernac@yahoo.fr; valqhristova@yahoo.fr; and patrizia.celli@villamedici.it. Proposals and papers may be submitted in French, Italian, or English. The organisation will cover the accommodation and meals of the speakers and will help in finding financial support for their travel expenses.

Organizing Committee
• Patrizia Celli, assistante chargée des colloques et du secrétariat du Département d’histoire de l’art – référente archives, Académie de France à Rome – Villa Médicis
• Alessandro Gallicchio, directeur du Département d’histoire de l’art, Académie de France à Rome – Villa Médicis
• Valentina Hristova, maîtresse de conférences en histoire de l’art moderne, Université de Picardie Jules Verne, Amiens
• Natacha Pernac, maîtresse de conférences en histoire de l’art moderne, Université Paris-Nanterre

Scientific Committee
• Lucien Bély, professeur émérite d’histoire moderne, Paris, Sorbonne Université, membre de l’Institut, Académie des sciences morales et politiques
• Francesco Freddolini, Professore associato di storia dell’arte moderna, Rome, Sapienza – Università di Roma
• Serge Gruzinski, directeur de recherche émérite en histoire, Paris, CNRS / EHESS
• Guido Guerzoni, historian and economist, adjunct professor, Milan, Università Luigi Bocconi
• Mei Mei Rado, Assistant Professor of Textile and Dress History, New York, Bard Graduate Center