The proposed research explores representations of non-European rulers made in early modern Europe for a western public, in order to reveal how such images manipulated identities and defined visual notions of alterity and exoticism. Often ethnographically incorrect, such portraits frequently situated the sitters within implausible narratives. By switching the focus from the ethnographical errors to the motives, the circumstances of production, and the reception of such imaginative narratives, and by employing digital tools for research and dissemination, this project will address the following questions:
1. How did early modern European artists (and their publics) imagine non-European cultures through the lens of portraits representing rulers and dignitaries?
2. How did such images contribute to articulate and complicate ideas of exoticism and otherness in the early modern world?
3. How do these images cast light on the cultural framework informing the visual culture of exoticism, geopolitical relations/tensions, colonial aspirations, and cross-cultural negotiations?
4. How do these images, by articulating an eminently European gaze, articulate historical notions of European identity understood in relation to other cultures?
By adopting the interpretive framework of two closely related iconographical traditions--the image of the ruler and the image of the ambassador--this project will unveil how the long-standing European tradition of state portraiture became a means to imagine exotic and unfamiliar cultures.
The envisioned outcomes of the project--an international workshop, an open-access edited volume, and an open-access database--will broaden our understanding of the role played by portraits of rulers and ambassadors in the formation of notions of alterity, and in articulating cross-cultural relations.
Images of alterity are simultaneously images of the self: deconstructing these portraits, their function, their context, and their production will also, in turn, reveal how European publics understood themselves in relation to other cultures, within a complex network of global interactions. Papal Rome provides eloquent examples with the monument to António Manuel ne Vunda, ambassador of Kongo to the Pope in 1608 (1629; Santa Maria Maggiore, Rome), and the portraits of foreign ambassadors in the Sala Regia of the Quirinal Palace, Rome (1616-1617). These portraits, as Mayu Fujikawa (2014) and Cécile Fromont (2015, 156-164) have argued, encode global preoccupations of the expanding early modern Catholic Church, articulating a "claim for evangelical leadership" (Fujikawa 2014, 208) that entailed Papal aspirations to lead diplomatic negotiations on a global scale. As the above-mentioned engraving depicting the King of Kandy shows, other portraits, beyond Rome, reveal concurrent and competing agendas¿in that case the Dutch imagining their (political/commercial/colonial) relations to Asian rulers, in a global competition with the Portuguese overseas empire. A study considering the larger political and economic context has therefore the potential to deepen our understanding of early modern cross-cultural relations, revealing the agency of such images in negotiating relations, tensions, and aspirations both within Europe, and on the competitive expanding global scale.
In the context of trans-Atlantic relations, the series of portraits of "Moctezuma", "Quoniambec", "Atabalipa, Roy du Peru", and "Paracoussi, Roy de Platte", included in André Thevet's Les vrais pourtraits et vies des hommes illustres (1584) is a case in point to show how such portraits were paired to effigies of other rulers, thus articulating new global discourses about rulers' identities (Schlesinger 1985; Hajovski 2009). Moreover, Thevet's book reveals how such images circulated widely in Europe: many of his engraved illustrations, in fact, derive from the Gioviana Series of portraits of Illustrious Men, produced in Florence for the Medici, and inspired by historian and collector Paolo Giovio (the portrait of Alchitroff, Emperor of Ethiopia, mentioned at the beginning of my text, is also part of the Gioviana Series). This pan-European exchange (and multiplication) of visual information, discloses the popularity of such images and their potential to exist across a variety of mediums and material contexts¿paintings, sculptures, and especially prints, often illustrating books.
Preliminary research conducted to prepare this application has already uncovered over 400 portraits pertaining to a variety of cultures across the early modern globe, and made in a variety of media. With further research such number will substantially increase.
This project thus poses a "data problem" related to the quantity of images, their mediums, subjects, destinations (e.g. paintings for galleries, engravings for books), artists (and other people such as travellers) involved, archival and other primary sources. For this reason this project lends itself the use of digital humanities' methods to raise new questions, generate themes of inquiry, and facilitate mobilization strategies. By designing a relational database to transform evidence into structured data (Helmreich, Fletcher, Freddolini, Jaskot, Pugh 2021), we will trace common themes, better relate images to texts and other primary sources, and implement a curated archive of information that will make this project feasible.
The "Regal Alterities" Database will be developed through the Open Access OMEKA platform, designed by George Mason University, and the metadata will be developed through CONA (Cultural Objects Name Authority), a controlled vocabulary currently developed by the Getty Research Institute (https://www.getty.edu/research/tools/vocabularies/cona/). CONA is still under development and individual projects contribute to its implementation. Our team will therefore become a contributor to CONA, especially in relation descriptive terms that can express transcultural exchanges in early modern visual culture. Through this collaboration with the Getty Research Institute, the database will not simply be a dissemination opportunity: it will become a research tool, enabling us (as well other scholars) to work with its data.
Students at Sapienza will be involved in the implementation of the database entries as part of laboratory sessions within at least two courses on early modern artistic global exchanges: one (Triennale, Global Humanities) and one (Magistrale, Storia dell'arte), taught by the PI respectively in English and Italian. Students will gain hands-on experience on theoretical and historical aspects of transcultural artistic exchanges and learn how to use databases, a tool that is becoming essential to any professional involvement in art-history professions, especially within Soprintendenze and museums.