Books by Gwendolyn Collaço
Prints and Impressions from Ottoman Smyrna, 2019
Introduction to edited volume entitled:
Prints and Impressions from Ottoman Smyrna. Memoria. Font... more Introduction to edited volume entitled:
Prints and Impressions from Ottoman Smyrna. Memoria. Fontes minores ad Historiam Imperii Ottomanici pertinentes, Volume 4, ed. Gwendolyn Collaço (Bonn : Max Weber Stiftung, Orient-Institut Istanbul, 2019). Series editor: Richard Wittman.
The volume presents a full-color facsimile and catalog of plates for the Harvard Fulgenzi Album with historical commentary by Evangelia Balta and Richard Wittmann. The introduction places the album within its historical and artistic contexts as a product of Mediterranean exchange. The essay traces the origins of the album plates to other forms of media including: Ottoman costume albums, European prints, and current events. The study introduces lithographs and engravings by the Fulgenzi Brothers of Smyrna, situating the corpus in the wider cultural landscape of the region's mixed Levantine heritage. Moreover, the introduction assesses how the album reflects the life and interests of its first owner, Thomas Walley Langdon, a member of the prominent merchant family that operated not only in Smyrna, but other major Mediterranean ports as well as his hometown of Boston. The album delves into political changes that shook Mediterranean trade routes frequented by merchants like Langdon. The illustrations preserve key figures from uprisings in North Africa and Egypt, to visual commentaries on slavery and the newly formed Greek state.
Papers by Gwendolyn Collaço
Ars Orientalis, 2021
Imported Paintings from ʿAcem and Hindūstān in an Eclectic Ottoman Market During the long eightee... more Imported Paintings from ʿAcem and Hindūstān in an Eclectic Ottoman Market During the long eighteenth century, a rising consumer class of Ottoman urbanites fed their global sensibilities with a host of goods from Istanbul's thriving market. Among these offerings, expansions in mercantile trade and diplomacy brought a widening range of imported artworks into the commercial painting sector. These works included not only European specimens but also paintings from India, Iran, and Central Asia, preserved in commercial albums that have yet to receive attention comparable to that enjoyed by their royal counterparts. The influx of imported paintings provided artists, compilers, and owners opportunities for interpreting these works in a new historical context. Their methods of engagement ranged from the textual inscription of new identities onto foreign figures and the artistic augmentation of the compositions (overpainting), to full-scale adaptations of these imported models into local aesthetics. This article begins with a case-study collection at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France before contextualizing these works within wider trends across the contemporaneous album corpus. In all cases, eclectic tastes dominated from the microlevel of the painting to the macro-level of the album, which together strove to make the foreign familiar and the old new in a visual expression of the stylistic novelty permeating Ottoman media of the period.
Textile History, 2017
The costume album remains an invaluable tool in revealing how patrons organised and catalogued th... more The costume album remains an invaluable tool in revealing how patrons organised and catalogued their constantly expanding world through dress. Considering the success of the costume book as a booming market product in early modern Europe and its response in the bazaars of Ottoman Istanbul in the early seventeenth century, the topic warrants further examination of how these books shaped literate society’s perceptions of other cultures. Two early costume albums illustrate a compelling dialogue concerning the population of Ottoman Istanbul, both commissioned in bazaars by foreign travellers: the Warsaw Album of the Muzeum Narodowe w Warszawie (BOZ 165), and the Peter Mundy Album currently residing at the British Museum (Add. 23880/1974-6-7-013). My article assesses how these books create contrasting portrayals of power and social diversity in the Ottoman Empire by using depictions of dress as windows into cultural mores. I explore how each book attempts to form a city portrait through its compilation of characters and dress in the albums. With these sources, I highlight how the joint e orts of Ottoman artists and foreign patrons o er a surprising range of interpretation, despite their mass-produced reputation in scholarship. This study highlights the considerable role of the European compiler as a curatorial agent in this process.
(for images from referenced album, see: http://www.harvardartmuseums.org/collections/object/311885), 2017
This essay analyzes the use of traditional costume and foreign dress seen in "An Album of Artist... more This essay analyzes the use of traditional costume and foreign dress seen in "An Album of Artists' Drawings from Qajar Iran." Though it, I address questions of temporality, modernity, and memory in a period of dynamic change in nineteenth-century Iran. I examine the varied source material for these costume designs circulating in Iran. I explore how Qajar artists negotiated their relationship between a visibly composite past and their outward-facing present.
Since the accompanying facsimile could not be uploaded here, the full album discussed in the essay is available online at Harvard Art Museums (http://www.harvardartmuseums.org/collections/object/311885)
Ottoman History Podcast by Gwendolyn Collaço
The destruction of Ottoman-era waqf institutions in the Balkans during the wars of the 1990s was ... more The destruction of Ottoman-era waqf institutions in the Balkans during the wars of the 1990s was extensive, from masjids and tekkes to bridges and libraries. A bibliographer at Harvard's Fine Arts Library, András Riedlmayer, traveled throughout the region to document this destruction during and after the wars. In this podcast, Riedlmayer describes his work on waqf institutions in the Balkans and his testimonies about the destruction of culture for international war tribunals over the last two decades. We discuss the fate of antiquities during wars and the ethical implications for historians, collectors and museums.
The illustrated account of the festivals surrounding the circumcision of Sultan Ahmed III's sons ... more The illustrated account of the festivals surrounding the circumcision of Sultan Ahmed III's sons in 1720 is one of the most iconic and celebrated depictions of urban life in Ottoman Istanbul. With its detailed text written by Vehbi, accompanied by the vibrant miniature paintings of Levni, this work has been used as a source for understanding the cast of professions and personalities that occupied the public space of the Ottoman capital. In this episode, we focus not on the colorful characters of Levni's paintings but rather the backdrop for the celebrations: the Golden Horn and the waterfront of 18th-century Istanbul. As our guest Gwendolyn Collaço explains, the accounts of festivals in early modern Istanbul reflect the transformation of the city and an orientation towards the waterfront not only in the Ottoman Empire but also neighboring states of the Mediterranean.
Talks by Gwendolyn Collaço
Scholars have recently begun to consider how costume albums of Near Eastern bazaars aided diploma... more Scholars have recently begun to consider how costume albums of Near Eastern bazaars aided diplomats in distinguishing palace officials and city figures through dress. However, these albums also had a role in the Islamicate world. The question remains of how these types of images or images of typology appealed to more than curious travelers, engaging both a local popular audience and even the court itself in the Ottoman and Safavid Empires. Yet to understand this phenomenon, we must consider the social contexts from which they emerged. How do these album interact with regional genres of literature, and a cosmopolitan market of bazaar artists, who drew from both European printed sources and emerging artistic trends at court? Additionally, in scholarship costume albums have been treated largely in an Ottoman context. Yet by discussing one of the earliest examples of a Safavid costume album, I will explore a wider trend in the illustration of costume in the Near East.
My paper examines two Safavid and Ottoman costume albums made for European travelers during the late seventeenth century: the Ralamb Costume Album (1657‐58) and the album of Dr. Engelbert Kaempfer (1684‐85). Both albums were made for members of Swedish embassies into these respective empires. First I examine the compilations of bazaar
miniatures by their European patrons and how these individuals could have used them during their journeys as guidebooks to new societies through their dress. Next I examine how the same miniatures within them also have a distinct relationship to a shared Persianate genre between these empires: şehrengiz/shahrashub. This poetic genre sought to catalogue the beauties of a city through costume elements, accessories of trade, guilds, and physical attribute. Thus I illustrate how bazaar artists catered the same stock of miniatures to both local and foreign audiences as a transcultural product.
While a considerable amount of scholarship has examined the character of Majnun as the embodiment... more While a considerable amount of scholarship has examined the character of Majnun as the embodiment the mystic lover in Sufi thought,1 Majnun’s role outside of this capacity receives comparably little attention. Likewise, much of the art historical work on depictions of Majnun center around narrative portrayals accompanying manuscript renditions of his tale2—although, as I shall explore, he had a distinct presence beyond this subgenre of painting. This paper attempts to fill one cross-section amongst these gaps in scholarship by addressing the didactic role of Majnun in the sixteenth-century Persianate painting. I consider two case studies from compilations of augury and courtly poetry: first, a Safavid painting from the Topkapı Persian Falnama, and secondly a Shaybanid album folio from Bukhara, which was calligraphed by Mir ‘Ali and currently resides at the Harvard Art Museums.
Despite being visibly informed by the mystic elements of the tale, these illustrations offer compelling instances of how a story so strongly associated with the Sufi milieu found interpretations and uses beyond that primary context--even challenging its mystic elements. In each case, Majnun becomes an anti-exemplar and warning to those who abandon themselves to their yearning and the ascetic path. By examining the accompanying texts to these illustrations, I analyze how artists and patrons of the period appropriated and remolded the Majnun’s plot for more secular purposes of personal edification within society. Afterwards, I offer possible causes for these admonitory interpretations of Majnun and how they may reflect the shifting public opinion of Sufi orders in the domains where these paintings originated. Thus these illustrations offer crucial insight into how a seemingly beloved story of mystic devotion became subverted into a cautionary tale during a period of anti-Sufi sentiment in Safavid Iran and its repercussions in Shaybanid Bukhara.
Frequently sold to travelers in the bustling bazaars of major ports like Constantinople, individ... more Frequently sold to travelers in the bustling bazaars of major ports like Constantinople, individual paintings by bazaar artists often found themselves collected and bound into albums for friends and family back home, the “armchair” travelers, if you will. Yet quite often, the role of the European patron in the compilation was overlooked for the costumed characters created at the hands of Ottoman artists, as an “authentic” representation of the society. However, as I explore here, patrons took an active role in the final product as both the selector of images and those who controlled how and where these books were bound. The following study attempts to reinsert the patrons into the stories of these codices through the unique nature of each compilation in an effort to highlight how these individuals colored each album’s vision of the Ottoman Empire. In this vein, I use two primary case studies from the early seventeenth century: the Anonymous Warsaw Album and the Peter Mundy Album (Warsaw, Biblioteka Nardawa, BOZ 165 and London, BL Add. 23880/BM 1974-6-7-013, respectively).
"Through their transgressive trends in clothing and action, progressive women in England and the ... more "Through their transgressive trends in clothing and action, progressive women in England and the United States shocked high society by donning the garb of the exotic Ottoman lady during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. This paper investigates the looming role played by their usage of turquerie clothing and its embodied alienation during early women’s rights struggles in these two countries. While accused of cross-dressing and reviled as improper, their goals drew inspiration from their own conception of femininity characterized by the Ottoman woman. Yet little work has addressed the significance of their sartorial adoption of Ottoman fashions and the messages conveyed through this highly personalized form of self- representation.
My paper first considers elements of Ottoman dress in the portraiture of Lady Mary Montagu following her journey to Istanbul. I examine them in conjunction with her travel letters published at the end of her life, which praise the perceived liberty and dress of her Ottoman counterparts. Her visual progression from superficial exoticism to Ottoman embodiment later in life marks one of the first major uses of Ottoman dress in this capacity for social critique. Next, I follow the reception of Lady Montagu’s letters and interpretation of Ottoman clothing during the American suffrage movement. I analyze newspaper prints and advertisements of the suffragists’ “Turkish dress,” and their critics. This project conveys how elements of the Ottoman fashion paradigm became a means to own and empower this position of alterity to elicit greater progress for women’s rights in their own society, starting with their own bodies."
Interfaith marriages between Christians and Muslims occurred in the medieval period from the lowl... more Interfaith marriages between Christians and Muslims occurred in the medieval period from the lowly peasant class to that of kings and queens, yet literary representations in large part provide a vastly contrasting view to historical precedent—and perhaps not unintentionally. This talk examines these romances as the sounding board for lay opinions of interfaith marriage, wherein readers could experience a more favorable alternate history of Christian relations with Muslims or “Saracens.” Several instances of such marriages include: The King of Tars, The Sultan of Babylon and Bevis of Hampton.
Each of these crusader romances illustrates an acceptance of the Muslim “other” through marriage and the subsequent conversion that comes with it. It further distinguishes the female protagonist, more often Muslim than Christian, as the propagator of Christianity to the heathens on an individual and mass level. Yet by following literary analysis with historical instances, some of which have arguably even inspired these narratives, the objectives of these pieces broaden to include the unexpected need to mask anxieties concerning the ratio of Christian to Muslim brides in historical interfaith marriage. With the overwhelming export of (usually Orthodox) Christian brides to Muslim leaders during the High Middle Ages, in addition to the spread of Islamic powers in the Byzantine and Latinate East, Christian societies countered their shortcomings in reality with a tremendous flood of literary depictions portraying the opposite outcome. From this incongruity, the literary fantasy of the Saracen bride becomes a tool to alleviate the blow of a quickly dwindling Christian power in the Near East.
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Books by Gwendolyn Collaço
Prints and Impressions from Ottoman Smyrna. Memoria. Fontes minores ad Historiam Imperii Ottomanici pertinentes, Volume 4, ed. Gwendolyn Collaço (Bonn : Max Weber Stiftung, Orient-Institut Istanbul, 2019). Series editor: Richard Wittman.
The volume presents a full-color facsimile and catalog of plates for the Harvard Fulgenzi Album with historical commentary by Evangelia Balta and Richard Wittmann. The introduction places the album within its historical and artistic contexts as a product of Mediterranean exchange. The essay traces the origins of the album plates to other forms of media including: Ottoman costume albums, European prints, and current events. The study introduces lithographs and engravings by the Fulgenzi Brothers of Smyrna, situating the corpus in the wider cultural landscape of the region's mixed Levantine heritage. Moreover, the introduction assesses how the album reflects the life and interests of its first owner, Thomas Walley Langdon, a member of the prominent merchant family that operated not only in Smyrna, but other major Mediterranean ports as well as his hometown of Boston. The album delves into political changes that shook Mediterranean trade routes frequented by merchants like Langdon. The illustrations preserve key figures from uprisings in North Africa and Egypt, to visual commentaries on slavery and the newly formed Greek state.
Papers by Gwendolyn Collaço
Since the accompanying facsimile could not be uploaded here, the full album discussed in the essay is available online at Harvard Art Museums (http://www.harvardartmuseums.org/collections/object/311885)
Ottoman History Podcast by Gwendolyn Collaço
Talks by Gwendolyn Collaço
My paper examines two Safavid and Ottoman costume albums made for European travelers during the late seventeenth century: the Ralamb Costume Album (1657‐58) and the album of Dr. Engelbert Kaempfer (1684‐85). Both albums were made for members of Swedish embassies into these respective empires. First I examine the compilations of bazaar
miniatures by their European patrons and how these individuals could have used them during their journeys as guidebooks to new societies through their dress. Next I examine how the same miniatures within them also have a distinct relationship to a shared Persianate genre between these empires: şehrengiz/shahrashub. This poetic genre sought to catalogue the beauties of a city through costume elements, accessories of trade, guilds, and physical attribute. Thus I illustrate how bazaar artists catered the same stock of miniatures to both local and foreign audiences as a transcultural product.
Despite being visibly informed by the mystic elements of the tale, these illustrations offer compelling instances of how a story so strongly associated with the Sufi milieu found interpretations and uses beyond that primary context--even challenging its mystic elements. In each case, Majnun becomes an anti-exemplar and warning to those who abandon themselves to their yearning and the ascetic path. By examining the accompanying texts to these illustrations, I analyze how artists and patrons of the period appropriated and remolded the Majnun’s plot for more secular purposes of personal edification within society. Afterwards, I offer possible causes for these admonitory interpretations of Majnun and how they may reflect the shifting public opinion of Sufi orders in the domains where these paintings originated. Thus these illustrations offer crucial insight into how a seemingly beloved story of mystic devotion became subverted into a cautionary tale during a period of anti-Sufi sentiment in Safavid Iran and its repercussions in Shaybanid Bukhara.
My paper first considers elements of Ottoman dress in the portraiture of Lady Mary Montagu following her journey to Istanbul. I examine them in conjunction with her travel letters published at the end of her life, which praise the perceived liberty and dress of her Ottoman counterparts. Her visual progression from superficial exoticism to Ottoman embodiment later in life marks one of the first major uses of Ottoman dress in this capacity for social critique. Next, I follow the reception of Lady Montagu’s letters and interpretation of Ottoman clothing during the American suffrage movement. I analyze newspaper prints and advertisements of the suffragists’ “Turkish dress,” and their critics. This project conveys how elements of the Ottoman fashion paradigm became a means to own and empower this position of alterity to elicit greater progress for women’s rights in their own society, starting with their own bodies."
Each of these crusader romances illustrates an acceptance of the Muslim “other” through marriage and the subsequent conversion that comes with it. It further distinguishes the female protagonist, more often Muslim than Christian, as the propagator of Christianity to the heathens on an individual and mass level. Yet by following literary analysis with historical instances, some of which have arguably even inspired these narratives, the objectives of these pieces broaden to include the unexpected need to mask anxieties concerning the ratio of Christian to Muslim brides in historical interfaith marriage. With the overwhelming export of (usually Orthodox) Christian brides to Muslim leaders during the High Middle Ages, in addition to the spread of Islamic powers in the Byzantine and Latinate East, Christian societies countered their shortcomings in reality with a tremendous flood of literary depictions portraying the opposite outcome. From this incongruity, the literary fantasy of the Saracen bride becomes a tool to alleviate the blow of a quickly dwindling Christian power in the Near East.
Prints and Impressions from Ottoman Smyrna. Memoria. Fontes minores ad Historiam Imperii Ottomanici pertinentes, Volume 4, ed. Gwendolyn Collaço (Bonn : Max Weber Stiftung, Orient-Institut Istanbul, 2019). Series editor: Richard Wittman.
The volume presents a full-color facsimile and catalog of plates for the Harvard Fulgenzi Album with historical commentary by Evangelia Balta and Richard Wittmann. The introduction places the album within its historical and artistic contexts as a product of Mediterranean exchange. The essay traces the origins of the album plates to other forms of media including: Ottoman costume albums, European prints, and current events. The study introduces lithographs and engravings by the Fulgenzi Brothers of Smyrna, situating the corpus in the wider cultural landscape of the region's mixed Levantine heritage. Moreover, the introduction assesses how the album reflects the life and interests of its first owner, Thomas Walley Langdon, a member of the prominent merchant family that operated not only in Smyrna, but other major Mediterranean ports as well as his hometown of Boston. The album delves into political changes that shook Mediterranean trade routes frequented by merchants like Langdon. The illustrations preserve key figures from uprisings in North Africa and Egypt, to visual commentaries on slavery and the newly formed Greek state.
Since the accompanying facsimile could not be uploaded here, the full album discussed in the essay is available online at Harvard Art Museums (http://www.harvardartmuseums.org/collections/object/311885)
My paper examines two Safavid and Ottoman costume albums made for European travelers during the late seventeenth century: the Ralamb Costume Album (1657‐58) and the album of Dr. Engelbert Kaempfer (1684‐85). Both albums were made for members of Swedish embassies into these respective empires. First I examine the compilations of bazaar
miniatures by their European patrons and how these individuals could have used them during their journeys as guidebooks to new societies through their dress. Next I examine how the same miniatures within them also have a distinct relationship to a shared Persianate genre between these empires: şehrengiz/shahrashub. This poetic genre sought to catalogue the beauties of a city through costume elements, accessories of trade, guilds, and physical attribute. Thus I illustrate how bazaar artists catered the same stock of miniatures to both local and foreign audiences as a transcultural product.
Despite being visibly informed by the mystic elements of the tale, these illustrations offer compelling instances of how a story so strongly associated with the Sufi milieu found interpretations and uses beyond that primary context--even challenging its mystic elements. In each case, Majnun becomes an anti-exemplar and warning to those who abandon themselves to their yearning and the ascetic path. By examining the accompanying texts to these illustrations, I analyze how artists and patrons of the period appropriated and remolded the Majnun’s plot for more secular purposes of personal edification within society. Afterwards, I offer possible causes for these admonitory interpretations of Majnun and how they may reflect the shifting public opinion of Sufi orders in the domains where these paintings originated. Thus these illustrations offer crucial insight into how a seemingly beloved story of mystic devotion became subverted into a cautionary tale during a period of anti-Sufi sentiment in Safavid Iran and its repercussions in Shaybanid Bukhara.
My paper first considers elements of Ottoman dress in the portraiture of Lady Mary Montagu following her journey to Istanbul. I examine them in conjunction with her travel letters published at the end of her life, which praise the perceived liberty and dress of her Ottoman counterparts. Her visual progression from superficial exoticism to Ottoman embodiment later in life marks one of the first major uses of Ottoman dress in this capacity for social critique. Next, I follow the reception of Lady Montagu’s letters and interpretation of Ottoman clothing during the American suffrage movement. I analyze newspaper prints and advertisements of the suffragists’ “Turkish dress,” and their critics. This project conveys how elements of the Ottoman fashion paradigm became a means to own and empower this position of alterity to elicit greater progress for women’s rights in their own society, starting with their own bodies."
Each of these crusader romances illustrates an acceptance of the Muslim “other” through marriage and the subsequent conversion that comes with it. It further distinguishes the female protagonist, more often Muslim than Christian, as the propagator of Christianity to the heathens on an individual and mass level. Yet by following literary analysis with historical instances, some of which have arguably even inspired these narratives, the objectives of these pieces broaden to include the unexpected need to mask anxieties concerning the ratio of Christian to Muslim brides in historical interfaith marriage. With the overwhelming export of (usually Orthodox) Christian brides to Muslim leaders during the High Middle Ages, in addition to the spread of Islamic powers in the Byzantine and Latinate East, Christian societies countered their shortcomings in reality with a tremendous flood of literary depictions portraying the opposite outcome. From this incongruity, the literary fantasy of the Saracen bride becomes a tool to alleviate the blow of a quickly dwindling Christian power in the Near East.