Visualizing a Space of Encounter: Intimacy, Alterity, and Trans-Imperial Perspective in an Ottoman-Venetian Miniature Album

Abstract

This article examines a miniature album constructed in the house of the Venetian bailo in Istanbul ca. 1660 through collaboration between a Venetian diplomat and his dragomans (diplomatic interpreters), Ottoman miniaturists, and Italian draftsmen. It argues that the manuscript was intended by long-time Venetian secretary and de facto bailo in Istanbul, Giovanni Battista Ballarino, as a handbook on Ottoman society for his hoped-for replacement and as a cautionary tale about the vital importance of dragomans for Venetian diplomacy at the Porte. By situating this Codex in its specific historical moment at the height of the War of Crete (1645- 1669) and in relationship to diverse textual and visual genres (both Ottoman and non-Ottoman) of representing the Ottomans, the article raises questions about the role of local (and “localized”) intermediaries in articulating a Venetian-Ottoman space of encounter. Specifically, it explores how, through their collaboration in this manuscript, dragomans lent it a particular trans-imperial perspective on the Ottoman Empire, at once intimate and foreignizing, metropolitan-Istanbulite and pro-foundly Venetian, underscoring the two polities’ entwined early modern histories.