Between 1300-1500, illegible Arabic scripts often appeared on the hems of garments depicted in Florentine painting and sculpture. Generally golden in color, they adorn religious figures in artworks by many leading artists, including Duccio, Giotto, Fra Angelico, Ghiberti, Donatello, and Verrocchio. Scholars have hypothesized that these “pseudoscripts” were likely the result of Mediterranean trade, especially textiles, as well as the script’s evocation of the Arabic-speaking Holy Lands and Jerusalem.

With photographs from the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florence’s Photothek’s collection, I trace Arabic-like scripts in artworks and their sources in textiles, metalwork, and ivories. Yet, while the medium of photography facilitates this research, it also changes the artworks and their meanings. The photographs can heighten or obscure the presence of the scripts. In photographs of bronze sculpture, the script is more visible than in person, whereas monochrome photography minimizes or conceals the gold scripts in polychrome paintings.

This project exhibits how new art histories can be written using twentieth century photographic collections. The camera captures evidence that emerges as significant many years after the shutter snapped. These Florentine Arabic scripts, likely unseen by the original photographers, record the impact of Islamic art on the early Renaissance.