This volume brings together some of the latest research on the cultural, intellectual, and commercial interactions during the Renaissance between Western Europe and the Middle East, with particular reference to the Ottoman Empire. Recent scholarship has brought to the fore the economic, political, cultural, and personal interactions between Western European Christian states and the Eastern Mediterranean Islamic states, and has therefore highlighted the incongruity of conceiving of an iron curtain bisecting the mentalities of the various socio-political and religious communities located in the same Euro-Mediterranean space. Instead, the emphasis here is on interpreting the Mediterranean as a world traversed by trade routes and associated cultural and intellectual networks through which ideas, people and goods regularly travelled. The fourteen articles in this volume contribute to an exciting cross-cultural and inter-disciplinary scholarly dialogue that explores elements of continuity and exchange between the two areas and positions the Ottoman Empire as an integral element of the geo-political and cultural continuum within which the Renaissance evolved. The aim of this volume is to refine current understandings of the diverse artistic, intellectual and political interactions in the early modern Mediterranean world and, in doing so, to contribute further to the discussion of the scope and nature of the Renaissance. The articles, from major scholars of the field, include discussions of commercial contacts; the exchange of technological, cartographical, philosophical, and scientific knowledge; the role of Venice in transmitting the culture of the Islamic East Mediterranean to Western Europe; the use of Middle Eastern objects in the Western European Renaissance; shared sources of inspiration in Italian and Ottoman architecture; musical exchanges; and the use of East Mediterranean sources in Western scholarship and European sources in Ottoman scholarship.

This lavishly illustrated volume is the first major global history of ornament from the Middle Ages to today. Crossing historical and geographical boundaries in unprecedented ways and considering the role of ornament in both art and architecture, Histories of Ornament offers a nuanced examination that integrates medieval, Renaissance, baroque, and modern Euroamerican traditions with their Islamic, Indian, Chinese, and Mesoamerican counterparts. At a time when ornament has re-emerged in architectural practice and is a topic of growing interest to art and architectural historians, the book reveals how the long history of ornament illuminates its global resurgence today. Organized by thematic sections on the significance, influence, and role of ornament, the book addresses ornament's current revival in architecture, its historiography and theories, its transcontinental mobility in medieval and early modern Europe and the Middle East, and its place in the context of industrialization and modernism. Throughout, Histories of Ornament emphasizes the portability and politics of ornament, figuration versus abstraction, cross-cultural dialogues, and the constant negotiation of local and global traditions. Featuring original essays by more than two dozen scholars from around the world, this authoritative and wide-ranging book provides an indispensable reference on the histories of ornament in a global context. Contributors include: Michele Bacci (Fribourg University); Anna Contadini (University of London); Thomas B. F. Cummins (Harvard); Chanchal Dadlani (Wake Forest); Daniela del Pesco (Universita degli Studi Roma Tre); Vittoria Di Palma (USC); Anne Dunlop (University of Melbourne); Marzia Faietti (University of Bologna); Maria Judith Feliciano (independent scholar); Finbarr Barry Flood (NYU); Jonathan Hay (NYU); Christopher P. Heuer (Clark Art); Remi Labrusse (Universite Paris Ouest Nanterre la Defense); Gulru Necipo?lu (Harvard); Marco Rosario Nobile (University of Palermo); Oya Pancaro?lu (Bosphorus University); Spyros Papapetros (Princeton); Alina Payne (Harvard); Antoine Picon (Harvard); David Pullins (Harvard); Jennifer L. Roberts (Harvard); David J. Roxburgh (Harvard); Hashim Sarkis (MIT); Robin Schuldenfrei (Courtauld); Avinoam Shalem (Columbia); and Gerhard Wolf (KHI, Florence).