Islamic Objects in Seventeenth-Century Italy
Edinburgh University Press (Verlag)
978-1-3995-4309-5 (ISBN)
This book reassesses the idea that Islamic objects in seventeenth-century Italy were considered mere curiosities, sparking no cultural or historical interest. It focuses on Italy’s largest collection of Islamic artefacts of the time, assembled by the Medici agent and Bolognese nobleman Ferdinando Cospi in his public gallery: the Cospi Museum. Through an extensive investigation of inventories, letters, and archival documents, the book follows the objects through the various paths which took them from the eastern shores of the Mediterranean, through North African cities, to Livorno, Florence and, finally, Bologna. These paths reveal the presence of a network of enslaved Turks, Arab scholars, Egyptian fishermen and Armenian merchants, all responsible for importing both the items and their stories, biographies and anecdotes to Italy. The book thus brings forward to the seventeenth century a phenomenon of cultural inquisition that was thought to start only a century later.
Federica Gigante is Senior Research Fellow at the University of Oxford. She is a historian of the material and intellectual exchanges between the Islamic world and Europe in the early modern period. She received a PhD from the Warburg Institute and SOAS and held fellowships at I Tatti (The Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies), Anamed (Koç University Research Center for Anatolian Civilizations) and the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florence. She currently leads a ERC-funded project on the role of slavery in the transmission of Islamic material culture and scientific knowledge in the early modern Mediterranean based at the Khalili Research Centre for the Art and Material Culture of the Middle East, at the University of Oxford. She was previously Research Associate in the History Faculty at the University of Cambridge. She worked for several years in a curatorial capacity at the University of Oxford, at the Ashmolean Museum first and History of Science Museum later, where she was in charge of Islamic scientific instruments.
List of Figures
List of Catalogue Entries
Abbreviations
Acknowledgements
Series Editor's Foreword
Introduction: All Things Turkish
1. The Life of Ferdinando Cospi
2. The History of the Cospi Museum
3. Islamic Artefacts Collected by Ferdinando Cospi
4. Acquisitions from the Ottoman World
5. Acquisitions from the Italian Market
6. Patronage and Donations
7. Transmission and Preservation of Knowledge
Conclusions: The Proto-ethnography of Collecting
Appendices
Catalogue
Bibliography
Index
| Erscheinungsdatum | 27.09.2025 |
|---|---|
| Reihe/Serie | Edinburgh Studies in Islamic Art |
| Zusatzinfo | 95 colour illustrations and 1 colour appendix |
| Verlagsort | Edinburgh |
| Sprache | englisch |
| Maße | 170 x 244 mm |
| Themenwelt | Kunst / Musik / Theater ► Kunstgeschichte / Kunststile |
| Geisteswissenschaften ► Geschichte ► Regional- / Ländergeschichte | |
| ISBN-10 | 1-3995-4309-1 / 1399543091 |
| ISBN-13 | 978-1-3995-4309-5 / 9781399543095 |
| Zustand | Neuware |
| Informationen gemäß Produktsicherheitsverordnung (GPSR) | |
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