Tinto Talks #37 - 13th of November 2024

[Failtier]

I wish you would show a small icon of the artwork in the UI.

Source

 

[Sulphurologist]

Commisioning a painting should (also) give the artist's culture a boost (even if it is your own culture), while owning high quality artworks from other cultures should increase your prestige ánd allow for your own culture to produce more qualitative art, too.

Quick question: If you, as the player of England, poach a Norman artist from France and he creates a work of art, does it benefit the English cultural dominance or tradition, or does it benefit the Norman cultural dominance or tradition.

English culture, if that is England's primary culture.

In this case, the English commisioner SPECIFICALLY commissions a Norman artist for his Norman piece of art. Why then, does the Norman culture not also get a boost?
The artist in question has been trained in his very specific school, tied to a cultural centre (i.e. Flemish Primitives, Italian Rennaissance, Dutch Realism,...). Yet, owning this piece of Norman art provides inspiration for English artists, which could potentially create more prestigeous paintings later.

The Burgundians and Spanish for example were obsessed with art, yet their cultures did not produce much art on the same scale as of the cultures they commissioned from (like the Low Countries, Italians,...). So while their courts were incredibly prestigeous, they allowed other cultures to express and flourish too.

Some benefits I can imagine gameplay-wise for commisioning another culture's piece of art:

1. owning another prestigeous culture's high quality artwork gives a bigger prestige bonus for your court
2. owning another prestigeous culture's high quality artwork boosts the ability of your culture to produce more qualitive art
3. Investing in your own culture's qualitative art production will allow for more cultural pressure towards nations owning YOUR art.

Egyptian artefacts, Ancient Greek buildings, Chinese texts, Italian Renaissance and Dutch Realism paintings, etc... are distinct cultural styles that we still associate with those cultures to this day. 'Musea' are indeed a good way to handle those, and I like the modifiers. I think that if your culture's artwork lives on in multiple musea (meaning: spread out over the world), your culture gains/retains influence.

 

[guinea prince]

This explains how all the world became Italian in our history. Except the Japanese, who were far enough away, and culture war'd everyone into Japanese once anime was made. Yup yup.

 

[FleetingRain]

Yeah, I agree that the artist's culture should get some fraction of prestige too. If I draw an award-winning Brazilian manga that sells more than One Piece, surely this is good for Brazilian culture, but am I really not indirectly promoting Japanese culture?

 

[Atromb]

Greek refugees spearheaded the Italian Renaissance

I've often heard this be claimed in the Internet but I'm not sure where this comes from, the italian renaissance had been going on for a century before Constantinople fell.

 

[PrzemysłII]

Can you invite artists from more culturally developed countries too? If you have a shitton of gold but are essentially "new money" nation you would invite Italians or Dutch to make you something for prestige, to show off. Not only some paintings it was not uncommon to hire an Italian architect to plan buildnings that would become iconic. And is any sort of art market? Even if no artist of note lives in, lets say, Sweden and you didn't manage to loot enough shiny stuff yet you should be able to just buy some Dutch paintjob.

 

[Davincie]

I'm surprised to see no Inventor (for the English), Calligrapher (for Asian or Arab cultures) or Historian as types of artists. How moddable is the system?

Historians could fall under writer, philosopher or scientist maybe. Calligraphers could be iconographer or writer (or painter?) inventor would overlap with scientist

 

[GenericType]

I've often heard this be claimed in the Internet but I'm not sure where this comes from, the italian renaissance had been going on for a century before Constantinople fell.

This is an old ass unvetted r/AskHistorians source from 10 years ago, fortunately, it has several sources:

They had quite a substantial influence, dating all the way back to the time of Petrarch and Boccaccio. They were the first two westerners who made serious attempts to read Greek literature since antiquity, and though ultimately they failed, they made some important first steps. They used two teachers, both Calabrian Greeks with ties to Constantinople, named Barlaam and Leontius Pilatus. They were primarily interested in learning Homer, which was unfortunately a very difficult text for beginners, and so neither Petrarch nor Boccaccio ever really learned Greek (though Boccaccio was somewhat successful. You can see many excerpts from Homer in his Genealogy of the Pagan Gods).

A generation later, a man by the name of Manuel Chrysoloras came to Florence from Constantinople, and it is with him that the Greek influence really takes off. He chose simpler texts for instruction, and he also managed to simplify the grammatical rules of ancient Greek substantially. From then on, knowledge of Greek was an important element of a humanist education.

Many Byzantine refugees were also responsible for bringing Greek texts over to Italy from Constantinople. We have frequent mentions of scholars hiring people to buy books for them from the East. Cardinal Bessarion, for example, was a Greek refugee who brought a huge Greek library with him to Rome.

If you would like to read more about any of this, I have a few books to suggest. For a very general and brief overview, I suggest Colin Wells Sailing from Byzantium. For some more heavy scholarship, you will unfortunately need to turn to Italian sources (unless you want to read about Bessarion, but unfortunately I don't have any specific reference for you on him). Petrarca e il mondo greco I: Atti del Convegno internazionale di studi Reggio Calabria 26-30 novembre 2001 and Manuele Crisolora e il Ritorno del Greco in Occidente: Atti del Convegno Internazionale (Napoli, 26-29 giugno 1997) both have a number of interesting articles in them. In English, N.G. Wilson's From Byzantium to Italy: Greek Studies in the Italian Renaissance is quite good, but also very dry.

The above did not say that the Greeks spearheaded it, so I may be quite hyperbolic with what I stated. Hence I will find more sources on this.

EDIT: This was a nice read. The historian basically postulated that the Renaissance actually started from the earlier Palaiologian/Macedonian revivals in the 10th century, in Byzantium. Though of course, it was being disputed in the thread, with one argument saying that the two renaissances were distinct movements, albeit with Greek influence in the Italian Renaissance being certainly a huge factor.

 

[Murken the smeg]

Maybe the chance of recovering artworks after seiges could be tied to military tradition (or discipline?) to show that some armies had a higher controll over their soldiers looting.

 

[gugfitufi]

I don't like the culture wars idea. In reality, cultures don't war like that and no one culture is slowly beating or destroying another because it is "stronger". Cultures change, they don't die in passive wars for survival.

Idk, it reminds me too much about dumbass modern racist talking points. I'd rather have cultures work more like how they work in Vic3 with the assimilation, which seems like it is the case, and then an active component if I want to change the culture of a specific province/location.

 

[Te. Kenzo]

Some questions:

1. We can gift/return/buy/sell pieces of art as a diplomatic action?
2. There are different chances for sacking pieces of art? I think especially about architecture, it's true that historically, obelisk where sacked, rarely (very rarely) temples were moved partially or even totally, but in general I don't think that taking a whole Basilica or Cathedral should be looted and took away from a location very easily if not at all.
3. There is a wonder\monuments system like in previous games? If yes, the architecture as a work of art how overlap with this system? Sometimes we built this kind of wonders by national decision, now the only way to have these things its going by using an artist? This is going to give special modifiers in the case of famous monuments?
4. I'm thinking about architecture also graphically, even without a monument system. In the past we had maps with 3D models as landmarks on the map for example. It is going to have also an impact graphically on landmarks? (For example, a not unique cathedral will spawn a cathedral model as a landmark in the location?

 

[Mindel]

They wont be able to assimilate or integrate too easily

Will there be any, ahem, "depopulation" actions that make the land a little less full of difficult-to-assimilate people?

 

[King_fsh]

What impact does the persecution of a religion or minority have on cultural influence / artists in Project Caesar?

The Spanish occupation of the southern Low Countries and the persecution of Protestant groups (from 1555 onwards) caused a cultural brain drain of artists (and money) towards the north. This shift focused the cultural center of the Diets language and Lowland culture in what is now the Netherlands.

 

[matthias887]

Does the culture in Colonies differ from the culture in the motherland? For example, as England/Great Britain if you have about 13 Colonies in Northern America and they start thinking, they have no english, but american culture?

 

[P.Quirinius]

they are abstracted in that the original work that is important

I don't understand what you mean by "original work" as its meaning could also diverge before and after the printing press became mainstream. Before the original work could technically only be contained in the original manuscript, which would more often than not get lost eventually lost, while the other manuscripts would almost always contain a more or less modified version. With the printing press on the other hand there were many identical copies of the work, which might not perfectly correspond to the author's intention, but can be still considered the original work. I hope the works of verbal art will not be localised and destroyable, as it would be ahistorical if works like the Divina Commedia or Roman de la rose got lost, just because the original manuscript was destroyed.

 

[Focus my son]

 

[Atromb]

This is an old ass unvetted r/AskHistorians source from 10 years ago, fortunately, it has several sources:


The above did not say that the Greeks spearheaded it, so I may be quite hyperbolic with what I stated. Hence I will find more sources on this.

EDIT: This was a nice read. The historian basically postulated that the Renaissance started from the earlier Palaiologian/Macedonian revivals in the 1100s, in Byzantium. Though of course, it was being disputed in the thread, with one argument saying that the two renaissances were distinct movements. Though Greek influence in the Italian Renaissance were certainly a huge factor.

Much debate can be had about how much influence different factors had, no question about that, but the influence of classical literature in the renaissance shouldn't be taken as byzantines spearheading it, specially since there were greek speakers in Italy at the time.
Saying "Greeks were involved in aiding in the translation of 'lost' classical texts into italian/latin that would be involved in shaping the culture of the renaissance" is very different from the implication that the renaissance was the translation to Italy of some secret knowledge only present in Byzantium. Specially since there already were numerous classical texts that had been preserved in latin (or translated from arabic through the 'Toledo School of Translators').
I would argue that it was the expansion of the university system, which led to a rise in the number of intelectuals, who has great interest in the study of the classics, that led to a demand to find a way to translate those classical works whose latin versions had either been lost or never existed, in order to have 'full access' to the works of the classics. That demand is what led to the hiring of greek intelectuals that could help to teach greek. Imo the collapsed of Byzantium was largely incidental and only really somewhat fastened an ongoing process.

 

[Runite Drill]

• Composer
  • This is an artist that creates music, including anything from a motet to a symphony. Famous composers of the era include Johan Sebastian Bach, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and Carl Michael Bellman.

You forgot Andreas Waldetoft, the great time-travelling music magician.

 

[ZigTheNorweigan]

They wont be able to assimilate or integrate too easily

Will there be a way to depict the historical phenomenon of China being conquered by foreigners from the north only to reverse assimilate the new ruling class into the wider Chinese cultural sphere. For example the Manchu language progressively died out and declined in health upon the Manchurian conquest by the end of the games timeline many former Manchu descendants could no longer speak Manchu and only spoke Mandarin Chinese with only the most inner imperial court surrouding the Emperor being able to speak Manchu and by the end of the Qing Dynasty i think even the Emperors had become habitual mandarin speakers from my understanding @zeruosi @Carcossa Castile Btw what are your thoughts on this?

 

[Spiritoftwinings]

Maybe it's just me, but outside of prestige effects, I don't get why "art" would increase pop assimilation. It's not like the English showed the Native Americans the Bayeux Tapestry and the natives suddenly thought hey, being Catholic Anglican and English is better than living our way! The Prussians certainly didn't show the Poles their marching songs, they repressed the latter's culture and religion very heavily, to the point that the Poles viewed Napoleon as their liberator and voluntarily joined his armies against their partitioners.

I liked how Imperator Rome approached this culture stuff way better through government policies for each culture.

No one said that the effects of cultural influence upon assimilation rates were going to be so overwhelming as to negate all the other factors which make a culture more resistant to being assimilated. Johan simply said that cultural influence would be *a* factor which contributes to cultural assimilation, which is fairly reasonable in historical terms. If, say, France during the Enlightenment produces Europe's most prominent philosophers, writers and scientists, then surely this should make things a little bit easier when it comes to assimilating France's diverse pops into the main primary culture (i.e. Francien/Parisian), since it is the lingua franca for much of the culture of that age. Soft power is definitely a thing that exists.

I think that the problem with the feature is that culture is something so abstract that's not easy to translate into numbers and transform it into a meaningful mechanic. Prestige is important and art certainly helps a country build a reputation, but it's impossible to assert how much of that prestige is due to culture and how much to other things. And obviously things like assimilation are complex phenomena that also are difficult to translate into numbers and calculations. If the US were to annex a country now, would Hollywood movies make it easier to assimilate the culture of the invaded country? Maybe they would, but by how much?