Few early modern materials are linked quite as closely to their site of primary production as Ven... more Few early modern materials are linked quite as closely to their site of primary production as Venetian glass. In the period between 1450 and 1650 CE, beginning with the emergence of the highly limpid and colorless vetro cristallo, glass made both in Venice and à la façon de Venise gained international acclaim, and cloaked Murano’s workshops and workers in artisanal myth. Although recent studies have examined the significance of this material for Venice and Murano, less is known about the processes through which this material became “Venetian.” This article proposes a transcultural interpretive framework that identifies and de-naturalizes this process of venezianizzazione (Venetianization) by focusing on the itineraries of the raw materials essential to the making of Venetian glass. By tracing the complex itineraries of matter such as Syrian plant ash and silica-rich stones from the Ticino river, it asks how, at which moment, and through whom such materials gained a relationship with Venice, and whether their prior uses, histories, and associations were erased in the furnaces of Murano’s workshops.
22nd International Congress of the Association Internationale pour l'Histoire du Verre Lisbon, Portugal, 13th – 17th September 2021, 2021
This paper investigates how the rapidly expanding Ottoman Empire sought glass from both Venice an... more This paper investigates how the rapidly expanding Ottoman Empire sought glass from both Venice and Ragusa to furnish new urban development projects in Bosnia in the sixteenth century. Despite increasing scholarly interest in Ottoman-Venetian material exchange during the early modern period, there is still much research to be done on the trade of glass between the two empires. Particularly understudied is the circulation of glass along the Adriatic frontier, between the republics of Venice and Ragusa and the politically shifting borderlands of the Ottoman Balkans. Although the lack of surviving early modern glass in situ poses a challenge, recent archeological findings (such as those published by Nikolina Topić) and the proliferation of Western Balkan studies in recent years now make it possible to re-evaluate patterns of glass consumption and artisanal transfer on both sides of the Adriatic during this slice of glassmaking history.
By evaluating new material alongside the primary sources of the Venetian and Dubrovnik state archives first made accessible by the work of Luigi Zecchin and Verena Han, I re-examine evidence of trans-Adriatic glass consumption at the borderlands of these Mediterranean empires. Particular focus will be paid to the typologies of glass that were in demand in Ottoman Bosnia, such as oculi/rui windowpanes and mosque lamps, and decorative preferences, such as evidence in the Western Balkans of vetro a filigrana. The primary unit of analysis is the role of the charitable endowment (Bosnian: vakuf) in urbanizing Ottoman-Bosnian towns and cities such as Sarajevo, Mostar, Foča, and Visoko. I demonstrate the necessity of crafting a more cohesive picture of the glass trade and artisanal exchange in this area during the sixteenth century, as this was both the “golden age” of the Venetian and Dubrovnik glassworks and the zenith of Ottoman expansion in Europe.
The Craft History Workshop: A works-in-progress seminar for interdisciplinary histories of making, 2022
In chapter twenty-nine of his 1564 work Dello specchio di scientia universale, the Italian travel... more In chapter twenty-nine of his 1564 work Dello specchio di scientia universale, the Italian traveler and physician Leonardo Fioravanti praises the work of the glassmakers of Murano. “Nowhere else in the world,” he writes, “has thus far been able to make this art in such perfection.” This achievement, Fioravanti claims, is due to the supreme technical skill (artificio) of the Muranese glassmakers. However, crucially, Fioravanti also emphasizes that “God and Nature have provided [this place] for the benefit of this art,” since such glass can only be produced with Venice’s “lagoons of salty water,” “plant ashes brought from Syria,” and the “light and beautiful flame” of the furnaces themselves. The craft of glass, evidently,is wrought by many actors. Taking Fioravanti’s pronouncement as a starting point, this talk identifies and discusses contemporary artisanal and literary attitudes toward the craft of glass in early modern Venice (c. 1450–1600). In contrast to dominant art historical paradigms of the nineteenth and twentieth century, which tend to privilege notions of stylistic purity and the cult of the individual artist, this research suggests an alternative interpretive model. This exploration is rooted in the so-called material turn of recent years as well as in sixteenth- century sources, both of which (re)cast the material as expansive, polyvalent, and agentive. Through tracing the itineraries of the raw materials of two types of colorless Venetian glass, vitrum blanchum and vetro cristallo, and by mapping their production within the node of the Muranese glass workshop through artisanal manuals and recipe books, it becomes possible to highlight the extent to which the realization of this craft was distributed across space and among various agents. Such an approach relocates Venice-made glass within a broader provenance and proposes a polytemporal, multi-nodal, and transcultural mode of interpretation.
International PhD Workshop 6/7 February 2020 – Sapienza, Università di Roma, 2020
This paper examines the potential of a medieval monument to express transcultural relationships a... more This paper examines the potential of a medieval monument to express transcultural relationships as they unfold over protracted periods of time, challenging categories of both the nation-state and of what is ‘North African’ or ‘European’. It takes as its case study the wooden ceilings of the Cappella Palatina, an unusually well-preserved medieval church in Palermo, Sicily. Both the island of Sicily (more generally) and the Cappella Palatina (more specifically) force reconsiderations of the nation as both natural container and analytical category due to the island’s tumultuous and syncretic cultural formations.
Sicily, particularly its major urban center Palermo, constituted a crucial node in the network of medieval courts, bringing the Muslim, Byzantine, and Latin worlds to its door and witnessing frequent clashes and transfers of power. After more than two centuries as a majority Arabic-speaking Muslim emirate, Norman invaders gradually conquered the island and installed a Latin-Christian kingdom. Sicily during the Norman monarchy can be understood as a ‘contact zone’, a space of dynamic hybridity, where Latin was spoken alongside Arabic and Greek. Furthermore, Palermo under the Norman monarchy, specifically under the reign of Roger II (r. 1130-1154), was an entrepôt of enormous wealth, attracting flows of labour, capital, and creative impetus. It was in this context that Roger II commissioned his Cappella Palatina, or ‘royal chapel’, as a richly-ornamented jewel box of Byzantine mosaics and distinctly-Islamic, wooden muqarnas ceilings. These carved, geometric ceilings are entirely covered by miniature painting reminiscent of Islamic palatial cycles. Though the exact artists are unknown, there was almost certainly significant input from itinerant North African master painters. The ceiling depicts both life in medieval Sicily and typical North African palatial motifs, such as scenes of a hunt, men playing chess, and seven distinct representations of Roger as an enthroned Islamic courtly ruler. From the 15th to 19th centuries, this Arabo-Siculo-Norman monument has been alternately repainted, effaced, and restored, processes that reveal complex negotiations of power, identity, and conceptions of otherness. Some figures, for example, have been given haloes and angel wings, and bands of Latin calligraphy have taken residence alongside Arabic Kufic inscriptions. This presentation considers the value of the palimpsestic, transtemporal qualities of the Cappella Palatina. It seeks to establish the palimpsest as an interpretive tool that questions fixed categories bound by nation or culture and studies the change of these categories through time. In doing so, it challenges contemporary understandings of the island of Sicily as being European or Italianate. Furthermore, this analysis of the Cappella Palatina proposes an approach to visual culture that allows for understanding diverse moments of contact, negotiation, and acculturation over periods of time within a single image or object.
Few early modern materials are linked quite as closely to their site of primary production as Ven... more Few early modern materials are linked quite as closely to their site of primary production as Venetian glass. In the period between 1450 and 1650 CE, beginning with the emergence of the highly limpid and colorless vetro cristallo, glass made both in Venice and à la façon de Venise gained international acclaim, and cloaked Murano’s workshops and workers in artisanal myth. Although recent studies have examined the significance of this material for Venice and Murano, less is known about the processes through which this material became “Venetian.” This article proposes a transcultural interpretive framework that identifies and de-naturalizes this process of venezianizzazione (Venetianization) by focusing on the itineraries of the raw materials essential to the making of Venetian glass. By tracing the complex itineraries of matter such as Syrian plant ash and silica-rich stones from the Ticino river, it asks how, at which moment, and through whom such materials gained a relationship with Venice, and whether their prior uses, histories, and associations were erased in the furnaces of Murano’s workshops.
22nd International Congress of the Association Internationale pour l'Histoire du Verre Lisbon, Portugal, 13th – 17th September 2021, 2021
This paper investigates how the rapidly expanding Ottoman Empire sought glass from both Venice an... more This paper investigates how the rapidly expanding Ottoman Empire sought glass from both Venice and Ragusa to furnish new urban development projects in Bosnia in the sixteenth century. Despite increasing scholarly interest in Ottoman-Venetian material exchange during the early modern period, there is still much research to be done on the trade of glass between the two empires. Particularly understudied is the circulation of glass along the Adriatic frontier, between the republics of Venice and Ragusa and the politically shifting borderlands of the Ottoman Balkans. Although the lack of surviving early modern glass in situ poses a challenge, recent archeological findings (such as those published by Nikolina Topić) and the proliferation of Western Balkan studies in recent years now make it possible to re-evaluate patterns of glass consumption and artisanal transfer on both sides of the Adriatic during this slice of glassmaking history.
By evaluating new material alongside the primary sources of the Venetian and Dubrovnik state archives first made accessible by the work of Luigi Zecchin and Verena Han, I re-examine evidence of trans-Adriatic glass consumption at the borderlands of these Mediterranean empires. Particular focus will be paid to the typologies of glass that were in demand in Ottoman Bosnia, such as oculi/rui windowpanes and mosque lamps, and decorative preferences, such as evidence in the Western Balkans of vetro a filigrana. The primary unit of analysis is the role of the charitable endowment (Bosnian: vakuf) in urbanizing Ottoman-Bosnian towns and cities such as Sarajevo, Mostar, Foča, and Visoko. I demonstrate the necessity of crafting a more cohesive picture of the glass trade and artisanal exchange in this area during the sixteenth century, as this was both the “golden age” of the Venetian and Dubrovnik glassworks and the zenith of Ottoman expansion in Europe.
The Craft History Workshop: A works-in-progress seminar for interdisciplinary histories of making, 2022
In chapter twenty-nine of his 1564 work Dello specchio di scientia universale, the Italian travel... more In chapter twenty-nine of his 1564 work Dello specchio di scientia universale, the Italian traveler and physician Leonardo Fioravanti praises the work of the glassmakers of Murano. “Nowhere else in the world,” he writes, “has thus far been able to make this art in such perfection.” This achievement, Fioravanti claims, is due to the supreme technical skill (artificio) of the Muranese glassmakers. However, crucially, Fioravanti also emphasizes that “God and Nature have provided [this place] for the benefit of this art,” since such glass can only be produced with Venice’s “lagoons of salty water,” “plant ashes brought from Syria,” and the “light and beautiful flame” of the furnaces themselves. The craft of glass, evidently,is wrought by many actors. Taking Fioravanti’s pronouncement as a starting point, this talk identifies and discusses contemporary artisanal and literary attitudes toward the craft of glass in early modern Venice (c. 1450–1600). In contrast to dominant art historical paradigms of the nineteenth and twentieth century, which tend to privilege notions of stylistic purity and the cult of the individual artist, this research suggests an alternative interpretive model. This exploration is rooted in the so-called material turn of recent years as well as in sixteenth- century sources, both of which (re)cast the material as expansive, polyvalent, and agentive. Through tracing the itineraries of the raw materials of two types of colorless Venetian glass, vitrum blanchum and vetro cristallo, and by mapping their production within the node of the Muranese glass workshop through artisanal manuals and recipe books, it becomes possible to highlight the extent to which the realization of this craft was distributed across space and among various agents. Such an approach relocates Venice-made glass within a broader provenance and proposes a polytemporal, multi-nodal, and transcultural mode of interpretation.
International PhD Workshop 6/7 February 2020 – Sapienza, Università di Roma, 2020
This paper examines the potential of a medieval monument to express transcultural relationships a... more This paper examines the potential of a medieval monument to express transcultural relationships as they unfold over protracted periods of time, challenging categories of both the nation-state and of what is ‘North African’ or ‘European’. It takes as its case study the wooden ceilings of the Cappella Palatina, an unusually well-preserved medieval church in Palermo, Sicily. Both the island of Sicily (more generally) and the Cappella Palatina (more specifically) force reconsiderations of the nation as both natural container and analytical category due to the island’s tumultuous and syncretic cultural formations.
Sicily, particularly its major urban center Palermo, constituted a crucial node in the network of medieval courts, bringing the Muslim, Byzantine, and Latin worlds to its door and witnessing frequent clashes and transfers of power. After more than two centuries as a majority Arabic-speaking Muslim emirate, Norman invaders gradually conquered the island and installed a Latin-Christian kingdom. Sicily during the Norman monarchy can be understood as a ‘contact zone’, a space of dynamic hybridity, where Latin was spoken alongside Arabic and Greek. Furthermore, Palermo under the Norman monarchy, specifically under the reign of Roger II (r. 1130-1154), was an entrepôt of enormous wealth, attracting flows of labour, capital, and creative impetus. It was in this context that Roger II commissioned his Cappella Palatina, or ‘royal chapel’, as a richly-ornamented jewel box of Byzantine mosaics and distinctly-Islamic, wooden muqarnas ceilings. These carved, geometric ceilings are entirely covered by miniature painting reminiscent of Islamic palatial cycles. Though the exact artists are unknown, there was almost certainly significant input from itinerant North African master painters. The ceiling depicts both life in medieval Sicily and typical North African palatial motifs, such as scenes of a hunt, men playing chess, and seven distinct representations of Roger as an enthroned Islamic courtly ruler. From the 15th to 19th centuries, this Arabo-Siculo-Norman monument has been alternately repainted, effaced, and restored, processes that reveal complex negotiations of power, identity, and conceptions of otherness. Some figures, for example, have been given haloes and angel wings, and bands of Latin calligraphy have taken residence alongside Arabic Kufic inscriptions. This presentation considers the value of the palimpsestic, transtemporal qualities of the Cappella Palatina. It seeks to establish the palimpsest as an interpretive tool that questions fixed categories bound by nation or culture and studies the change of these categories through time. In doing so, it challenges contemporary understandings of the island of Sicily as being European or Italianate. Furthermore, this analysis of the Cappella Palatina proposes an approach to visual culture that allows for understanding diverse moments of contact, negotiation, and acculturation over periods of time within a single image or object.
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By evaluating new material alongside the primary sources of the Venetian and Dubrovnik state archives first made accessible by the work of Luigi Zecchin and Verena Han, I re-examine evidence of trans-Adriatic glass consumption at the borderlands of these Mediterranean empires. Particular focus will be paid to the typologies of glass that were in demand in Ottoman Bosnia, such as oculi/rui windowpanes and mosque lamps, and decorative preferences, such as evidence in the Western Balkans of vetro a filigrana. The primary unit of analysis is the role of the charitable endowment (Bosnian: vakuf) in urbanizing Ottoman-Bosnian towns and cities such as Sarajevo,
Mostar, Foča, and Visoko. I demonstrate the necessity of crafting a more cohesive picture of the glass trade and artisanal exchange in this area during the sixteenth century, as this was both the “golden age” of the Venetian and Dubrovnik glassworks and the zenith of Ottoman expansion in Europe.
island’s tumultuous and syncretic cultural formations.
Sicily, particularly its major urban center Palermo, constituted a crucial node in the network of medieval courts, bringing the Muslim, Byzantine, and Latin worlds to its door and witnessing frequent clashes and transfers of power. After more than two centuries as a majority Arabic-speaking Muslim emirate, Norman invaders gradually conquered the island and installed a Latin-Christian kingdom. Sicily during the Norman monarchy can be understood as a ‘contact zone’, a space of dynamic hybridity, where Latin was spoken alongside Arabic and Greek. Furthermore, Palermo under the Norman monarchy, specifically under the reign of Roger II (r. 1130-1154), was an entrepôt of enormous wealth, attracting flows of labour, capital, and creative impetus. It was in this context that Roger II commissioned his Cappella Palatina, or ‘royal chapel’, as a richly-ornamented jewel box of Byzantine mosaics and distinctly-Islamic, wooden muqarnas ceilings. These carved, geometric ceilings are entirely covered by miniature painting reminiscent of Islamic palatial cycles. Though the exact artists are unknown, there was almost certainly significant input from itinerant North African master painters. The ceiling depicts both life in medieval Sicily and typical North African palatial motifs, such as scenes of a hunt, men playing chess, and seven distinct representations of Roger as an enthroned Islamic courtly ruler. From the 15th to 19th centuries, this Arabo-Siculo-Norman monument has been alternately repainted, effaced, and restored, processes that reveal complex negotiations of power, identity, and conceptions of otherness. Some figures, for example, have been given haloes and angel wings, and bands of Latin calligraphy have taken residence alongside Arabic Kufic inscriptions. This presentation considers the value of the palimpsestic, transtemporal qualities of the Cappella Palatina. It seeks to establish the palimpsest as an interpretive tool that questions fixed categories bound by nation or culture and studies the change of these categories through time. In doing so, it challenges contemporary understandings of the island of Sicily as being European or Italianate. Furthermore, this analysis of the Cappella Palatina proposes an approach to visual culture that allows for understanding diverse moments of contact, negotiation, and acculturation over periods of time within a single image or object.
By evaluating new material alongside the primary sources of the Venetian and Dubrovnik state archives first made accessible by the work of Luigi Zecchin and Verena Han, I re-examine evidence of trans-Adriatic glass consumption at the borderlands of these Mediterranean empires. Particular focus will be paid to the typologies of glass that were in demand in Ottoman Bosnia, such as oculi/rui windowpanes and mosque lamps, and decorative preferences, such as evidence in the Western Balkans of vetro a filigrana. The primary unit of analysis is the role of the charitable endowment (Bosnian: vakuf) in urbanizing Ottoman-Bosnian towns and cities such as Sarajevo,
Mostar, Foča, and Visoko. I demonstrate the necessity of crafting a more cohesive picture of the glass trade and artisanal exchange in this area during the sixteenth century, as this was both the “golden age” of the Venetian and Dubrovnik glassworks and the zenith of Ottoman expansion in Europe.
island’s tumultuous and syncretic cultural formations.
Sicily, particularly its major urban center Palermo, constituted a crucial node in the network of medieval courts, bringing the Muslim, Byzantine, and Latin worlds to its door and witnessing frequent clashes and transfers of power. After more than two centuries as a majority Arabic-speaking Muslim emirate, Norman invaders gradually conquered the island and installed a Latin-Christian kingdom. Sicily during the Norman monarchy can be understood as a ‘contact zone’, a space of dynamic hybridity, where Latin was spoken alongside Arabic and Greek. Furthermore, Palermo under the Norman monarchy, specifically under the reign of Roger II (r. 1130-1154), was an entrepôt of enormous wealth, attracting flows of labour, capital, and creative impetus. It was in this context that Roger II commissioned his Cappella Palatina, or ‘royal chapel’, as a richly-ornamented jewel box of Byzantine mosaics and distinctly-Islamic, wooden muqarnas ceilings. These carved, geometric ceilings are entirely covered by miniature painting reminiscent of Islamic palatial cycles. Though the exact artists are unknown, there was almost certainly significant input from itinerant North African master painters. The ceiling depicts both life in medieval Sicily and typical North African palatial motifs, such as scenes of a hunt, men playing chess, and seven distinct representations of Roger as an enthroned Islamic courtly ruler. From the 15th to 19th centuries, this Arabo-Siculo-Norman monument has been alternately repainted, effaced, and restored, processes that reveal complex negotiations of power, identity, and conceptions of otherness. Some figures, for example, have been given haloes and angel wings, and bands of Latin calligraphy have taken residence alongside Arabic Kufic inscriptions. This presentation considers the value of the palimpsestic, transtemporal qualities of the Cappella Palatina. It seeks to establish the palimpsest as an interpretive tool that questions fixed categories bound by nation or culture and studies the change of these categories through time. In doing so, it challenges contemporary understandings of the island of Sicily as being European or Italianate. Furthermore, this analysis of the Cappella Palatina proposes an approach to visual culture that allows for understanding diverse moments of contact, negotiation, and acculturation over periods of time within a single image or object.