Corps et Espaces. Les costumes des Balkans dans l’Europe du xvie siècle

This paper is part of an ongoing research on dress and appearances in the framework of cultural history. It focuses on the transfer of visual culture concerning dress and bodily practices of the Balkan regions across Italy and Europe in the late Renaissance. Less focused on the materiality of clothes, the paper aims at reconstructing processes of cultural representation and dissemination across space within an interpretive framework that views the production of images as part of broader political tensions, intersecting the coexistence of ethnic and religious minorities. I shall focus on a neglected area of research, i.e. Balkan costumes and the ways in which they were represented in the xvi century, taking into account the transfers, tensions and failures inherent in the migration of images, and the ways in which visual hegemonies were gradually established. Tracing the representation of costumes and customs from the Balkan Peninsula in Sixteenth century Europe implies a transcultural and trans regional approach. It requires a constant crossing of borders between the contested and changing territories of three Empires of different dimensions: the Ottoman, Hapsburg and Venetian stato da mar. Representing Balkan identities therefore means locating ethnic, linguistic and religious minorities inside large scale competing political entities where bodies and attire were often sites of camouflaged and ambivalent identities and where minorities marked their traditions mostly through ritual and the costumes of women