From Afar, Travelling Materials and Objects, Exhibition, Petite Galerie du Louvre, Paris: 22 September 2021-4 July 2022

From further back than the mind can imagine, carnelian, lapis lazuli, ebony, and ivory circulated along trade routes: these materials were even more precious because they came from afar. Their fascination was enriched by the myths surrounding their origin. Their use became a manifestation of prestige, and the meaning of the works of art that employed them was thus enriched, modified, amplified. From the Head of Gudea, Prince of Lagash to a small lapis lazuli bead in the shape of a frog, the exhibition presents these materials in great variety. 

Among the many materials supplied by nature to art are the teeth of large animals – hippopotamus, boar, narwhal, mammoth, and elephant. As part of the Petite Galerie’s accessibility outreach, this year, you will have the opportunity to touch an elephant’s tusk. 

Works of art came to life through the materials chosen by artists, but their story then underwent the hazards of travel, taste, and transformation. Forms, techniques, and themes intertwined to create new objects, reflecting all the complexity of our world as it could be perceived in Europe from the late Middle Ages on. Each work recounts a different story, from the long voyages, often still mysterious, of the Middle Ages, to far-flung trade, to the moment in the 16th century when the world went global. In the 19th and 20th centuries, military and scientific expeditions provided still other sources of exchange and transfer.