The Fall of Byzantium in 1453 and the Shaping of Identity in Early Modern Venice

FAIN: FT-61222-13

Janna Israel
Princeton University (Richmond, VA 23284-9005)

My book manuscript, "As Though another Byzantium:" Shaping Identity in Early Modern Venice, explores ruptures to the image of the Venetian Republic and its territories around the time of the conquest of Constantinople by the Ottoman Turks in 1453. The book focuses on a range of activity including gift exchange and the appropriation of relics, manuscripts, architectural forms, and paintings from the East to the Venetian Republic, along with the theatrical ceremony staged to accommodate these objects. In a moment of geopolitical upheaval, I argue that these gestures signaled periods of intense hostility and tenuous peace between the Venetians and the Ottomans, beginning with the first official declaration of war between the two political powers in 1463. This study analyzes the way in which visual and material culture informed the rhetoric of the conflict between the Venetian Republic and the Ottoman Turks around the time of the conquest.