Abstract
The interest in all things Turkish in the seventeenth century led to a quest for knowledge, information and clues regarding all those artefacts and natural specimens that made their way into Italy. Experts were often consulted, but who were those experts mentioned passingly in catalogues, notes, and letters? This talk will attempt to answer this question by exploring the network of knowledge made up of slaves, merchants, and scholars who lived in or passed through Italy in the seventeenth century.
It will demonstrate how prisoners at the penal colony of Livorno were quizzed for clues on things, herbs, and the usage of items. It will suggest that domestic servants were involved in cataloguing “Turkish” objects. It will highlight how learned enfranchised slaves were invited to join scholarly discussions about the properties of exotic specimens. Drawing on archival evidence, this talk will explore the piecemeal approach of the Italian scholars and collectors to their “Turkish” material and the contribution of the Italian “Turks” to their knowledge.
Federica Gigante is Curator of the Collection from the Islamic World at Oxford’s History of Science Museum. Her research examines the transmission of knowledge and the movement of things, people, and ideas between the Islamic world and Italy in the Early Modern period. She is particularly interested in how artefacts, manuscripts, scientific instruments, and natural specimens travelled from the Islamic world to Italy and in how knowledge and information was gathered in Islamic territory, travelled across the Mediterranean, and was received in Italy. She is currently finalising her monograph about the collecting of Islamica and procurement networks of the Medici protégé and agent Ferdinando Cospi in seventeenth-century Italy.
