Islamic Objects in Seventeenth-Century Italy

Federica Gigante is Senior Research Fellow at the University of Oxford. She is a historian of the material and intellectual exchanges between the Islamic world and Europe in the early modern period. She received a PhD from the Warburg Institute and SOAS and held fellowships at I Tatti (The Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies), Anamed (Koç University Research Center for Anatolian Civilizations) and the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florence. She currently leads a ERC-funded project on the role of slavery in the transmission of Islamic material culture and scientific knowledge in the early modern Mediterranean based at the Khalili Research Centre for the Art and Material Culture of the Middle East, at the University of Oxford. She was previously Research Associate in the History Faculty at the University of Cambridge. She worked for several years in a curatorial capacity at the University of Oxford, at the Ashmolean Museum first and History of Science Museum later, where she was in charge of Islamic scientific instruments.

A fascinating tour through the close study of one man’s exceptional collections, its catalogues and a vast array of other archives, even down to tiny labels. Through the study of this rich material, Federica Gigante’s beautifully written book illustrates the complex transmission, accumulation and transformation of knowledge surrounding Islamic objects – from dazzling art to small artefacts and manuscripts – as they travelled across the Mediterranean to Italy.

• List of FiguresList of Catalogue EntriesAbbreviationsAcknowledgementsSeries Editor's ForewordIntroduction: All Things Turkish1. The Life of Ferdinando Cospi2. The History of the Cospi Museum3. Islamic Artefacts Collected by Ferdinando Cospi4. Acquisitions from the Ottoman World5. Acquisitions from the Italian Market6. Patronage and Donations7. Transmission and Preservation of KnowledgeConclusions: The Proto-ethnography of CollectingAppendicesCatalogueBibliographyIndex