How did transcultural exchanges, explorations, art market(s), travels, and diplomatic interactions influence artistic production, taste, and collecting? By focusing on the early modern period (roughly 15th -18th centuries), this course explores material and artistic exchanges across cultures and investigates case studies casting light on how encounters among diverse societies have shaped art and visual/material culture. After a preliminary methodological and historical introduction, the course will focus especially on three major Italian centres—Rome, Florence, and Venice—to explore their interactions with the global world, and investigate how entangled objects, complex ethnoscapes, and mobility help us problematize the production and spectatorship of art in relation to local and global contexts.