EBOOK
Portraits of Empires
Habsburg Albums from the German House in Ottoman Constantinople
Robyn Dora RadwaySeries: Ottomanica: Voices, Sources, Perspectives(0)
About
In the late 16th century, hundreds of travelers made their way to the Habsburg ambassador's residence, known as the German House, in Constantinople. In this centrally located inn, subjects of the emperor found food, wine, shelter, and good company-and left an incredible collection of albums filled with images, messages, decorated papers, and more.
Portraits of Empires offers a complete account of this early form of social media, which had a profound impact on later European iconography. Revealing a vibrant transimperial culture as viewed from all walks of life-Muslim and Christian, noble and servant, scholar and stable boy-the pocket-sized albums containing these curiosities have never been fully connected to the abundant archival records on the German House and its residents. Robyn Dora Radway not only introduces these objects, the people who filled their pages, and the house at the center of their creation, but she also presents several arguments regarding chronologies of exchange, workshop practices, the curation of social networks and visual collections based on status, and the purposes of these highly individualized material portraits.
Featuring 162 fascinating color images, Portraits of Empires reconstructs the world of Habsburg subjects living in Ottoman Constantinople using a rich and distinctive set of objects to raise questions about imperial belonging and the artistic practices used to articulate it.
Portraits of Empires offers a complete account of this early form of social media, which had a profound impact on later European iconography. Revealing a vibrant transimperial culture as viewed from all walks of life-Muslim and Christian, noble and servant, scholar and stable boy-the pocket-sized albums containing these curiosities have never been fully connected to the abundant archival records on the German House and its residents. Robyn Dora Radway not only introduces these objects, the people who filled their pages, and the house at the center of their creation, but she also presents several arguments regarding chronologies of exchange, workshop practices, the curation of social networks and visual collections based on status, and the purposes of these highly individualized material portraits.
Featuring 162 fascinating color images, Portraits of Empires reconstructs the world of Habsburg subjects living in Ottoman Constantinople using a rich and distinctive set of objects to raise questions about imperial belonging and the artistic practices used to articulate it.
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Reviews
"Portraits of Empire is an accessible and beautifully produced book that will be of great interest to scholars of early modern Central Europe, the Ottoman empire, and the Holy Roman Empire, as well as visual and material culture more generally."
Frederick Crofts
"In sum, Portraits of Empires combines a wealth of hugely impressive archival research and insightful analysis of its visual source material into a book brimming with ideas. Art historians, historians of collecting, but also all those interested in the intertwined histories of central Europe and the Ottoman Empire will find a great deal to reward close reading of this rich, learned, and thought-pr
Simon Mills
"Through archival research and painstaking attention to languages and autographs Radway beautifully weaves the mostly forgotten stories of the German House residents with the better-known narratives of high-ranking officials of the Reich. Portraits of Empires is brilliantly researched, beautifully written and exhilarating to read."
Nebahat Avcıoğlu