PUBLICATIONS
Gentile Bellini’s Portrait of Sultan Mehmed II: Lives and Afterlives of an Iconic Image, I.B. Tauris/Bloomsbury, 2020.
Available through the publisher and on Amazon. I am currently exploring an Italian translation and the possibility of a documentary film. Stay tuned!
This book recounts the adventures of Gentile Bellini's portrait of Sultan Mehmed II, produced at the Ottoman court, Istanbul in 1480 and hanging today in London. In the intervening years, the portrait got caught up in some key cultural moments: in the activities of the British archaeologist and Orientalist Austen Henry Layard (excavator of Nineveh in Iraq) who purchased the picture in 1865; in early attempts to define national patrimony in Italy; and in a legal debate over the definition of a "portrait" in England. It influenced the Ottoman search for reliable historical imagery in the sixteenth century, and returned triumphant to Istanbul in 1999 in a moment when Turkey was petitioning for membership in the European Union. It is both a renowned picture and a reviled one, an iconic image that has also been marginalized for its poor condition and imperfect provenance.
As indicated in my subtitle, Lives and Afterlives, the book is an object biography, telling the story of Gentile Bellini’s painting while using it as a lens to explore an array of historical and art historical topics, including authenticity, verisimilitude, ownership, cross-cultural exchange, and political identity. It explores global connections, past and present, through a single but endlessly fascinating portrait.
If you’d like to listen some before reading, check out these options:
NYU, Casa Italiana, April 2024
Turkey book Talk podcast, November 2020
or read a bit about the book here: Asian Review of Books, January 2021
Heritage writing
“A Sense of Place: Hidden Stories of the Johns Hopkins University Homewood Campus,” ICOM News, Special Issue: Museums and Cultural Landscapes, 2015 (vol. 68, no. 3): 12–13.
“Preserving and Perpetuating Memory at the Musée Nissim de Camondo in Paris,” Museum History Journal 7: 1 (January, 2014): 36-54.
On object mobility, collecting, and display
“Containing Collections: Bernardin di Redaldi’s Inventory (1527) and the Social Meaning of Islamic Metalwork in Early Modern Venice,” Islamic Art and Architecture in Italy: Between Tradition and Innovation, ed. Silvia Armando and Avinoam Shalem (in preparation).
“Imitation as a Mercantile Strategy: The Case of Damascene Ware,” Typical Venice? The Art of Commodities, 13th-16th Centuries, ed. Ella Beaucamp and Philippe Cordez, Brepols Publishers, 2020, pp. 107-119.
“Mobile Things: On the Origins and Meanings of Levantine Objects in Early Modern Venice,” Art History 41 (April, 2018): 246-65.
“Mapping the Provenance of Museum Objects,” Archive, Issue 2, Fall 2012.
Venice: history and art
“The Politics of Marriage in Carpaccio’s St. Ursula Cycle,” Early Modern Women: An Interdisciplinary Journal 8 (October, 2013): 85-117. Winner, Best Article Prize, 2013.
“The Sultan’s True Face? Gentile Bellini, Mehmet II, and the Value of Verisimilitude,” in The Turk and Islam in the Western Eye, 1450–1750: Visual Imagery before Orientalism, ed. James Harper, Ashgate, 2011, pp. 21-40.
“Mapping Narrative at the Church of San Marco: A Study in Visual Storying,” Word & Image 14 (no. 4, 1998): 387–96.
“Describing Narrative in Gentile Bellini’s Procession in Piazza San Marco,” Art History 21 (March, 1998): 26-44.
On exhibitions and museums
Smarthistory: 6-part series on art museums, their history, politics, and practicalities:
“Artists in and against the Museum,” May 25, 2019
“Looking at Art Museums,” May 15, 2019
“Art Museums and (Art) Objects,” May 15, 2019
"The Changing Social Functions of Art Museums," June 18, 2018
"A Brief History of the Art Museum," April 27, 2018
“Museums and Politics: The Louvre, Paris,” December 19, 2017
See also Smarthistory videos on the facade of San Marco (May 2, 2020) and Carpaccio’s St. Ursula cycle (in production).
“Exhibition Situations: Allyson Purpura in Conversation with Elizabeth Rodini,” Art Journal Open, September 10, 2018.
“Exhibition Situations: Risham Majeed in Conversation with Elizabeth Rodini,” Art Journal Open, February 12, 2018.
“Digging Collections: Lessons from Mark Dion’s ‘An Archaeology of Knowledge,” in An Archaeology of Knowledge: A Permanent Art Installation for the Brody Learning Commons. JHU: The Sheridan Libraries & University Museums, 2012, pp. 35–40.
"The Ivory Tower and the Crystal Palace: Universities, Museums, and the Potential of Public Art History,” caa.reviews, Nov. 27, 2007.
Catalogs and exhibition publications
Printed Sculpture/Sculpted Prints, The Baltimore Museum of Art, 2007 (with students from Johns Hopkins University).
The City Real and Ideal, The Baltimore Museum of Art, 2006.
Paper Museums: The Reproductive Print in Europe, 1500–1800, with Rebecca Zorach. Chicago: David and Alfred Smart Museum of Art, 2005.
A Well-Fashioned Image: Clothing and Costume in European Art, 1500–1850, with Elissa B. Weaver. Chicago: David and Alfred Smart Museum of Art, 2002.
“Signs in Stone: The Symbolic Value of Jewelry in Renaissance and Baroque Europe,” La cultura ceñida: Las joyas en la pintura valenciana siglos xv a xviii. Valencia: Centre Valencià de Cultura Mediterrànea, 2000.
“The Language of Stones," Art Institute of Chicago Museum Studies 25 (no. 2, 2000): 17–28.
Other
I am also the author of book reviews and encyclopedia entries; production and copy editor of museum catalogues; reviewer for journal and book manuscripts; and served caa.reviews for three years as an exhibition field editor and four years on the editorial board.