080016 PS Case Study II/III: "Lost in Translation?" (2021W)

For a majority of its history the Ottoman Empire’s rule extended over vast expanses of land in Europe. It was a major player not only on a political level, but also as in the cultural sphere. For instance, local elites in Eastern Europe adopted Ottoman clothing and avidly consumed goods produced in the rest of the Ottoman Empire. This appreciation for the material culture shaped by Ottoman imperial aesthetics was not restricted to occupied territory or vassal states. A similar phenomenon is noticeable among other European elites such as the Habsburgs. Obliged to pay a yearly tribute and present gifts to the Ottoman Sultan after their defeat at the battle of Mohacs in 1526, the Habsburg Court regularly sent envoys to Istanbul throughout much of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. A steady flow of Ottoman handcrafts also reached the Hapsburg Empire. The latter were greatly valued and integrated for example in princely Kunstkammern. In these new contexts, the objects were used to legitimise the Hapsburg in relation to their European rivals by presenting themselves as the protectors of Christian Europe.
In this period, a great number of images of the Ottoman Empire and its inhabitants was also produced by European artists, many of whom accompanied the official delegations to Istanbul. These depictions demonstrate the fascination that the Ottoman Empire exerted on its European challengers, but they also reveal the pictorial stereotypes that governed the representation of Ottoman society in European art. In this sense, the images extended and strengthened the dominant discourse in the political realm which pitted European powers against the Ottoman Empire and Christianity against Islam, weaving together both martial and religious rhetoric. As the political and economic balance of power slowly started to shift in favour of European states in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the portrayal of the Ottomans in European art evolved and new consumption patterns spread between the Empire and its European neighbours.
The course considers the cultural exchanges between the Ottoman Empire and European states through the circulation of luxury goods and of visual representations. Taking a longue durée approach, it examines the various ways in which early modern elites dealt with the conundrum of cultural identity through their consumption practices and the pictorial representations of themselves and of the imagined Other that they commissioned.

The main aims of the course are:
-to practise presenting one’s research coherently
-to foster critical reading of scholarly literature

Describing, analysing and interpreting art works is practised with the help of short assignments, a presentation and a final paper. By discussing texts together, the class trains critical thinking.