ARTH3018

This course offers a wide-ranging introduction to visual culture under the Ottoman Empire. Initially formed as a small principality at the beginning of the fourteenth century in Anatolia, the Ottoman polity established itself as a major political and military power through the early modern period and beyond. With emphasis placed upon key monuments and objects, we will examine an array of artistic media, ranging from manuscript illumination and calligraphy to ceramics, textiles, metalwork, glasswork and jewelry. Major themes include the urban transformation of the Byzantine capital; the formation of imperial ideology and its visual articulation, the formation of a distinctive imperial style across media; the operation of court ateliers and societies of artists and artisans; contacts and interactions with the European and Islamic contemporaries; and cultural and artistic "decline."