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.
