Forging European Identities, 1400-1700. Cultural Exchange in Early Modern Europe : Cambridge University Press : 9780521845496 : 0521845491 : 22 Mar 2007 : Cultural exchange, the dynamic give and take between two or more cultures, has become a distinguishing feature of modern Europe. This was already an important feature to the elites of the fifteenth, sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and it played a central role in their fashioning of self. The cultures these elites exchanged and often integrated with their own were both material and immaterial; they included palaces, city-dwellings, paintings, sculptures, ceramics, dresses and jewellery, but also gestures, ways of sitting, standing and walking, and dances. In this innovative and well-illustrated volume all this lively exchange is traced from Bruges, Augsburg and Istanbul to Italy; from Italy to Paris, Amsterdam, Dresden, Novgorod and Moscow; and even from Brazil to Rouen. This volume, which reveals how a first European identity was