Sophie-Annette Kranen, MA

Subproject 1 looks at drawings, prints, handwritten notes and illustrated travelogues produced by European artists who travelled through the eastern Mediterranean in the 17th and early 18th century. This body of visual material encompasses various perspectives on the region’s monuments, whose perceptions were influenced by narratives from different historical epochs, such as antique tradition, biblical history and accounts by pilgrims. At the same time, the images position these monuments – and themselves – in relationship to the contemporary inhabitants, cities and landscapes of the Ottoman Empire. The artistic works of European travellers negotiate the encounter with the ‘Other’ in different historical strata and constellations and as such form an object of study in which visual constructions of difference must be analysed in terms of their multi-polarity, shifts, overwritings and dynamics. On the basis of case studies, the project identifies what correlations between travelling and artistic practice become visible in the texts and images of the travellers. Pursuing our overarching interest in the artistic reflections of the experience of alterity and processes of cultural exchange, we thereby look at two questions and their interplay in particular: to what extent are these experiences and processes determined by the eastern Mediterranean sphere as a multi-ethnic and multi-faith contact zone hallmarked by trade and seafaring? And how is a historically multi-layered experience of alterity expressed by references to monuments, artworks and written accounts dating from different epochs?