Twelfth IESHR Lecture by Gülru Necipoğlu

Date: 

Thursday, December 20, 2018, 7:00pm

Location: 

Stein Auditorium, India Habitat Centre, Lodi Road, New Dehli 110 003

Cosmopolitan Aesthetics of Empire: Arts, Politics, and Commerce in the Construction of Sultan Süleyman's Magnificence’

A perspective of Sultan Süleyman’s (r. 1520-1566) empire, viewed from the lens of visual material presents a rather different picture from that of official Ottoman written sources, enabling readings that are not explicitly stated in texts. The lecture explores this proposition by focusing on the less familiar first half of the sultan’s reign, when expansion into Central Europe and Italy constituted the main priority. During this period, the intertwined networks of the arts, politics, and commerce involved such actors as the Venetian Doge’s son Alvise Gritti (d. 1534), the notorious playwright and art critic Pietro Aretino’s (d. 1556) circle in Venice, the grand vizier İbrahim Pasha (d. 1536), and the grand admiral of the Ottoman navy Hayreddin Barbarossa (d. 1546). Ultimately, the aim of this lecture is to highlight the generally overlooked cosmopolitanism of visual court culture prior to the codification of a mature “classical” Ottoman idiom in the arts and architecture after the mid-1540s, which has by now become common knowledge.

Gülru Necipoğlu is the Aga Khan Professor and Director of the Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture at Harvard University's Department of History of Art and Architecture. She specializes in the architectural and urban history of the medieval and early modern periods, with a particular focus on the Ottoman Empire, the Mediterranean basin, and the Eastern Islamic lands. Her books include Architecture, Ceremonial Power: The Topkapi Palace (1991); The Topkapi Scroll, Geometry and Ornament in Islamic Architecture (1995), which won the Albert Hourani and the Spiro Kostoff book awards; The Age of Sinan: Architectural Culture in the Ottoman Empire (2005), which won the Fuat Köprülü Book Prize. Other than her many articles, edited and co-edited volumes Professor Necipoğlu  is the editor of Muqarnas and an elected member of the American Philosophical Society, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the Centro Internazionale di Studi di Archittettura Andrea Palladio in Vicenza. 

More Information

 

The Indian Economic and Social History Association  and SAGE  are pleased to announce the Twelfth IESHR Lecture  by Gülru Necipoğlu