Stefania Costache

Paula Backscheider Archival Fellowship Travel Award
Travel report

My research focuses on the princely secretaries and copyists that created and stored official documentation in an 18th century non-European, Ottoman provincial setting to emphasize the role of individual and group strategies in the emergence of what is generally considered the depersonalized, centralized modern state. The provincial setting under investigation is that of 18th century Walachia and Moldavia, two non-Muslim tributaries of the Ottoman Empire, whose leaders were appointed by the sultan from among the Phanariots, wealthy Greek families involved in trade and the Ottoman bureaucracy. The main thrust of my research is to explain the process through which individuals of different social standing in the local Walachian and Moldavian communities and the Ottoman imperial center found it rewarding to gather and systematize documents regulating social life. In so doing the purpose is to recover those political and administrative practices that facilitated the exercise of the Ottoman imperial sovereignty in Walachia and Moldavia, but which would also create the administrative basis for the two provinces’ state modernization and unification in the 19th century.
The assumption for this research is that the association of the exercise of political authority with the creation of a depersonalized repository of power results from a process whereby political interactions and individual/group strategies relate extensive recording with a self-perpetuating source of political power. The historical process through which individual and group strategies imbued the act of recording with the appearance of impersonal power could be the basis for comparative studies of particular scenarios of state modernization in and outside of Europe.
In the months of June and July of 2007, I conducted preliminary research in the National State Archives in Bucharest, former capital of Walachia and capital of the modern Romanian state. My purpose was to discover whether a group of active copyists and secretaries distinguished themselves as constant recorders in Walachia, in how many copies they edited their manuscripts, and whether a detailed register of copies was kept. As several of these secretaries and copyists accompanied their princes in their successive rules over Moldavia and Walachia, and were recruited from the ecclesiastical ranks or had connections with the church, I decided to search the National State Archives from Iassy, and the Ecumenical Library “Dumitru Staniloaie” of the Metropolitan See of Moldavia and Bucovine, Iassy.
During the three days long preliminary research in Iassy, I analyzed whether any of the names of secretaries whose manuscripts I discovered in Bucharest appeared on documents preserved in Iassy. I searched if the documents were preserved systematically by the secretaries, their patrons or the chancellery. I also sought to verify if the secretaries accompanied their masters and in so doing, wrote a body of documentation that was similar in style and purpose to the ones of Walachia and Moldavia.
In the inventories “Manuscripts” no. 789 from the National State Archives of Iassy, several documents such as no. 56 (the Register of Treasury in Moldavia for 1777-1817) and no. 112 (“Collection of all letters written until now” of the prince Grigore Ion Calimah) collect previous official writings and certify that by the second half of the 18th century the princes developed an interest in the systematic preservation of documents. The safe keeping of registers of documents was already a current practice among private individuals who invoked them in legal litigations. By the second half of the 18th century the prince and his secretaries began to preserve the official documentation issued to the administration and to private individuals for land demarcations or recognition of privileges. The fact that the prince became involved, through the secretaries and copyists, in the creation and preservation of documents, and that documentation became an official, administrative activity is confirmed by the presence and classification of a particular type of documents, the falsified papers. For example, the papers gathered in the Collection “Documents”, Inventory 1120, pack 257 were falsified documents from the period 1638-1771. The fact that by 1771 certain documents were classified as false by the secretaries and that this classification was influential to determine the outcome of litigations is evocative of two transformations. The prince successfully represented himself as supreme instance of validation of documents and hence of knowledge about his subjects. Deciding on the authenticity of a document, the prince’s secretaries and copyists represented themselves as a defined social and professional group, distinguished from other literate individuals by the fact that they received exclusivity in imposing the format of the writings, and in evaluating documents.
In what concerns the social background of the secretaries and the question whether they were chosen from among the local families or accompanied the prince in his office, several documents suggest that copyists such as Ionie Gandul were locally based and kept the records of specific regions. Testimonies by secretaries such as Axinte Uricariul, in litigations that involved local nobles also imply that they were visible socially and also involved in the local life (see Inventory 1120, packs 284 and 295). Nevertheless, information about the patterns of entry into service or of acquisition of titles is scant in these documents. To investigate this issue, I will continue my research with an investigation of the literature about monastic schools in Walachia and Moldavia and in the Ottoman Empire, from where the Christian Phanariot princes were appointed to rule in the two tributary countries. Following the advice of the head archivist from the Ecumenical Library “Dumitru Staniloaie” of the Metropolitan See of Moldavia and Bucovine, Iassy, I will also consult the literature about the constitution of the National Archives in Romania, which also contains valuable information about the authors and the place of origin of the documents in the Romanian Archives.

Robert R. Palmer Research Travel Award: Final Report
Mimi Hellman, Skidmore College
September 2008

With the support of the Robert R. Palmer Research Travel Award, I spent four weeks in Paris June-July 2008, conducting research for two articles on decorative painting in 18th-century France.  These projects bring a revisionist approach to a type of art has long been disparaged as formulaic, commercialized, and unworthy of serious attention.  One is a historiographic and theoretical examination of how such works have been regarded since the 18th century and how a new interpretive model might recover some of their original significance.  The other is a case study that explores the visual dynamics and dynastic significance of Charles-Joseph Natoire’s paintings of the myth of Cupid and Psyche, executed in the 1730s for a salon at the hôtel de Soubise in Paris.

At the Institut National d’Histoire de l’Art and the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, I consulted a wide range of rare primary sources, from scripts for theatrical versions of the Psyche myth to exhibition reviews that condemn decorative painting as a corruption of artistic ideals.  I also spent many hours at the hôtel de Soubise, studying Natoire’s paintings in situ and taking photographs that capture the visual experiences of visitors approaching the building from the street and moving through its elaborately gilded, mirrored rooms.  At the Drawings Department of the Musée du Louvre, I examined some of Natoire’s prepatory drawings for the Soubise paintings, which offer fascinating insights into his design process and the visual choices that produce specific effects and meanings in the final works.  I also studied and photographed a painted stairwell, now at the Musée Carnavalet, that is similar to one produced for the hôtel de Soubise but now lost.  Featuring an illusionistic loggia populated by figures, it engages museum visitors with a playfulness that surely delighted 18th-century spectators as well.  In addition, I examined a wide variety of decorative paintings—from lavish still lifes to scenes of mythological romances—at the Musée du Louvre, the Musée Jacquemart-André, the Musée Nissim de Camondo, and the Musée Cognacq-Jay.

The work accomplished during the grant period has deepened my understanding of important primary sources and fueled my excitement for discovering meaning in seemingly innocuous artifacts.  I now have a far more nuanced understanding of the material and a clearer sense of how to structure and support my arguments.  All of my scholarship contributes to a field—decorative arts studies—that is still in its early stages.  The articles on decorative painting, when completed, should be attractive to peer-reviewed journals seeking innovative work.  I am very grateful to the ASECS Fellowship Committee for choosing to support my work, and look forward to an ongoing process of discovery.