Picturing the Ottoman History and Ottomans

This course explores Ottoman historical painting from the fifteenth to the nineteenth centuries and provides students with a better understanding of this visual culture through analyzing and interpreting manuscript illustrations. While examining select examples of manuscript and album paintings, the emphasis will be on their meanings, context, artists, and patrons. The major themes to be addressed are: Paintings in legendary - historical narratives and in literary texts, individual pictures compiled in artistic mecmu'as (albums), and portrait series of the Ottoman sultans. In addition, the course delves into the dynamics of Istanbul as an art market and the relation between the visual culture of the court and the city. Depictions of artists and their works found in Ottoman texts will be yet another issue to be covered.