Contextualizing the "Typographia Medicea": Texts and visual images as media of culture and knowledge transfer between cultural areas of Europe and the Orient ca. 1600

• Applicants: Professor Dr. Eckhard Leuschner; Professor Dr. Gerhard Wolf
• Subject Area: Art History ; Islamic Studies, Arabian Studies, Semitic Studies
• Term: from 2014 to 2018
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 255497143

Studying the example of the Typographia Medicea (TM), a highly innovative publishing house active between 1584 and 1614, this project is intended to explore the spectrum of cultural transfers in the years around 1600. It will thus deal with the mechanisms of control involved in the circulation and regulation of knowledge, with an emphasis on the visual and textual communications of Italy with the Ottoman Empire and Safavid Persia. The archives of the TM are exceptionally well preserved but large parts have not yet been explored. By transcribing and analyzing a selection of the documents pertaining to the TM's modus operandi and to the genesis of some key publishing projects, including the processes of procuring manuscripts, editing, illustration, censorship, printing, distribution and sale, it is intended to gain a better understanding of the cultural as well as technical innovations of the period and their impact on the transfer of knowledge. Taking into account the importance of paratextual aspects, special attention will be given to the relations between various kinds of texts and images and their cultural conditions. Furthermore, for the first time the entire production of the TM, i.e. the books printed in Arabic and Turkish as well as the Latin and Italian publications, will be studied as a unity in order to understand the various intentions connected with the activities of the TM in Western and Central Europe as well as in the Ottoman and Safavid territories. This entails finding and analyzing preserved copies of TM publications in/from the regions just mentioned, i.e. books whose bindings, annotations etc. can inform us about the ways in which they were used. The project not only aims to revise the Orientalism-Occidentalism dichotomy but is also intended to contribute to the ongoing methodological discussions vis-a-vis a future Global History (and Global Art History).

• DFG Programme: Research Grants