Book Lovers, Prints & Converts in the Early Modern Era: Not the usual East-West Narrative

Reviewed by: Cleo Cantone, London

Books Reviewed

• Dürer’s Knots - Early European Print and the Islamic East, by Susan Dackerman. Princeton & Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2024, 190pp. ISBN: 978-0691250441.

• The Study - The Inner Life of Renaissance Libraries, by Andrew Hui. Princeton & Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2025, 356pp. ISBN: 978-0691243320.

• Becoming Ottoman: Converts, Renegades and Competing Loyalties in the Early Modern and Modern Ages, edited by Yavuz Köse, Petr Kučera, Tobias Völker. IB Tauris, 2025, 255pp. ISBN: 978-0755640997.

I must have arrived at the opportune moment: as I turned from greeting the receptionist at the Warburg Institute’s newly refurbished entrance, I was smiled at, greeted and hand-shaken by none other than Andrew Hui: “I’m the author”, he beamed. And because he instantly caught on to my native pronunciation of studiolo, proceeded to carry on the conversation in fluent Italian while apologising for it being arruginito or rusty. I had indeed come to the book presentation of his newly published book, The Study - The Inner Life of Renaissance Libraries and was already intrigued by this ebullient encounter with the presenter. In the introduction to his presentation, Hui touched upon the re-vamping of the institute, where he was Brian Crawford Fellow in 2015 and indigenously wove two images from the Institute’s gallery/vestibule into his talk. The panel on the wall adjacent to the lecture theatre depicts the Institute’s library as its imagined and ideal self (Fig. 1) and, not unlike the essence of the Renaissance studiolo, possesses the quintessential ingredients for studious contemplation, scholarly companionship and top quality intellectual fodder. In addition to ‘some spacious court’—of which the Warburg possesses one of moderate size—the panel includes a box for a ‘pleasant garden’. To give credit where it is due, the Institute’s grand renovation (appropriately known as the ‘Warburg Renaissance’) includes a green roof which can be appreciated from the stairwell in the library if you crouch down in the floor-level windows (Fig. 2).