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Abstract
This article explores issues of cross-cultural communication raised by the Ottoman court's intense patronage of European artistic talent during the early part of Süleyman the Magnificent's reign (1520–1566). It situates the network of patronage of a group of regalia made in Venice for the sultan and a related project for royal tapestries within the context of Ottoman-Hapsburg-papal rivalry. Displayed as parade accessories and stage props in ostentatious ceremonies, these non-Islamic royal status symbols were primarily aimed at communicating Ottoman imperial claims to a European audience through a Western discourse of power. They became publicized through the popular media of European prints, news pamphlets, plays, and songs, which won the sultan his title of “Magnificent” in the West. The article concludes with an analysis of mid-sixteenth-century changes in cultural orientation that abruptly brought this lively chapter in East-West artistic relations to an end.
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Gülru Necipoǧlu
Gülru Necipoǧlu received her Ph.D. degree from Harvard University in 1986. Her article “Plans and Models in Fifteenth- and Sixteenth-Century Ottoman Architectural Practice” was awarded the Founder's Award of the Society for Architectural Historians for Best Article of 1986 by a young scholar, and her forthcoming monograph on the Topkapi Palace won the Samuel H. Kress Publication Fellowship award of 1989, administered by the Architectural History Foundation. [Department of Fine Arts, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138]