Printing empire: visual culture and the imperial archive in seventeenth-century Venice

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Stouraiti, Anastasia. 2016. Printing empire: visual culture and the imperial archive in seventeenth-century Venice. The Historical Journal, 59(3), pp. 635-668. ISSN 0018-246X [Article]

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Abstract or Description

This article analyses the relationship between imperial expansion and popular visual culture in late seventeenth-century Venice. It addresses the impact of the military on the marketplace of print and examines the cultural importance of commercial printmaking to the visualization of colonial motifs during the 1684–99 war with the Ottoman Empire. Through a broad array of single-sheet engravings and illustrated books encompassing different visual typologies (e.g. maps, siege views, battle scenes, portraits of Venetian patricians, and representations of the Ottomans), the article re-examines key questions about the imperial dimensions of Venetian print culture and book history. In particular, it shows how warfare and colonial politics militarized the communication media, and highlights the manner in which prints engaged metropolitan viewers in the Republic's expansionist ventures. In so doing, the analysis demonstrates how the printing industry brought the visual spectacle of empire onto the centre stage of Venetian cultural life.

Item Type:

Article

Identification Number (DOI):

https://doi.org/10.1017/S0018246X1500031X

Additional Information:

The research for this article has been generously funded by the Leverhulme Trust, support which I gratefully acknowledge. I would also like to thank the anonymous referees who read this article for their valuable comments.