Description
Between the mid-16th century and the Age of Enlightenment, Western European
interest in the Ottoman Empire and Constantinople was fuelled by the accounts of
travellers. Their journeys through the Balkan Peninsula to the Sublime Porte for various
purposes (including religious, diplomatic, and exploratory missions) provided valuable data
in written descriptions and visual representations, hence insights into the “historical
phonosphere” (Rostagno 2023). Works such as Nicolas de Nicolay’s Livres des navigations
et peregrinations Orientales (1568 and other editions) became foundational texts for the
popular literary genre of costume books. These sources served as “guidebooks for
navigating society” (Schick 1999) and played a significant role in shaping cultural identities
and power relations (Calvi 2013). Although Eurocentric and inaccurate at times, many
sources depict and describe musicians, instruments, and musical or dance performances,
revealing their intrinsic social and cultural values and meanings. A crucial example is Figure
colorite al vivo, preserved in three sets of manuscripts at the Austrian National Library in
Vienna, among others, attributed to the dragomans Marc Antonio Mamuca della Torre
(Cod. 8574) and his son Cristoforo (Cod. 8602–8604 and 8562–8564) and drawing upon
numerous earlier sources, including Nicolay’s text, Lambert de Vos’s Türkisches
Kostümbuch, and further illuminated manuscripts from the Austrian National Library (Cod.
8626 and 8615). A comparison of these and other works, including Salomon Schweigger
(1608) and Paul Rycaut (1668), allows us to trace an iconographic tradition that
demonstrably influenced later works such as Jean-Baptiste Vanmour’s Recueil de Cent
estampes (1714) and Filippo Bonanni’s Gabinetto Armonico (1772).
