Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies | Khalili Research Centre | The Oxford Centre for the History of Science, Medicine, and Technology
Principal Investigator of UNSEEN ERC Starting Grant Project
Federica is a historian of the material and intellectual exchanges between the Islamic world and Europe in the late medieval and early modern periods. She is interested in how things, people, and ideas moved across Central Asia and the Mediterranean and were adopted and adapted in new cultural contexts with a particular focus on Islamic art and scientific instruments. Federica received her PhD jointly from SOAS and the Warburg Institute in 2018, holds an MA in Cultural and Intellectual History of the Renaissance from the Warburg Institute, and a BA in Art History from the Università Cattolica of Milan. She was doctoral fellow at the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florence and Koç University in Istanbul (ANAMED), and postdoctoral fellow at I Tatti, The Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies. Federica worked for several years in a curatorial capacity at the University of Oxford – at the Ashmolean Museum (2018-20) and History of Science Museum (2020-23), where she was in charge of Islamic scientific instruments. From 2023 to 2025 she was Research Associate at the University of Cambridge and a member of the Italian ROSE AHRC-funded project. Her research has been supported by the Royal Society, the Renaissance Society of America, the Iran Heritage Foundation, and the Delmas Foundation.
Federica’s first book, Islamic Objects in Seventeenth-Century Italy: Ferdinando Cospi, the Bologna Collection and the Medici Court (Edinburgh University Press, 2025), examines how Islamic artefacts travelled from the Islamic world to Italy in the early modern period and the connected knowledge that came with them through mercantile, collecting, and gift-exchange networks. The book focuses on Italy’s largest collection of Islamic artefacts of the time, the museum of Ferdinando Cospi, and on its patrons, the Medici family. In particular, it investigates the networks of Armenian merchants, Egyptian fishermen, enslaved Turks, and Arab scholars that took the objects from the eastern shores of the Mediterranean, through North African cities, to Livorno, Florence and, finally, Bologna.
Federica is currently the PI of the ERC Starting Grant project UNSEEN, Unveiling Networks: Slavery and the European Encounter with Islamic Material Culture (1580-1700). The project seeks to investigate the role of slavery in the transmission of things and knowledge from the Islamic world to Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries. In particular, it focuses on the communities of enslaved people coming from North Africa and the eastern Mediterranean residing in European port towns and largely employed as oarsmen on board the galleys. UNSEEN’s goal is to unveil their agency in the circulation of material culture as well as technological and scientific know-how coming from the Islamic world into Europe.
Federica is currently working on her second monograph The Souks of Europe: Slavery and the European Rediscovery of Islamic Material Culture, Knowledge and Practices, which will offer the first synoptic study of the role of slavery in the transmission of Islamic material culture in its broad sense of objects, herbs, and remedies in a transnational context. She is also working on the history of coffee drinking, material culture, and slavery as well as on food exchanges between North Africa and Italy.
In the Media
The Guardian – ‘Extraordinary’: Islamic and Jewish science merge in 11th-century astrolabe
The New York Times – This 1,000-Year-Old Smartphone Just Dialed In
The Times – Thousand-year-old star chart shines light on Jewish-Arab
Der Welt – So wanderte das 1000 Jahre alte Astrolabium von Hand zu Hand
Scientific American – ‘How a Rare Islamic Astrolabe Helped Muslims, Jews and Christians Tell Time and Read Horoscopes’
El País – ‘Descubierto un astrolabio andalusí que usaron musulmanes, judíos y cristianos’
Le Monde – ‘Un curieux astrolabe médiéval gravé d’inscriptions en arabe et en hébreu’
La Repubblica – ‘L’astrolabio della pace. Scritto in caratteri arabi, ebrei e latini nell’anno Mille: “Indica che la convivenza è possibile”’
Publications
Monograph
Federica Gigante, Islamic Objects in Seventeenth-Century Italy: Ferdinando Cospi, the Bologna Collection and the Medici Court (Edinburgh University Press, 2025)
Journal articles
Federica Gigante, “An Islamic Tent Fresco in the Church of St Antonio in Polesine in Ferrara.” The Burlington Magazine 167 (February 2025): 80–95.
Federica Gigante and Andrew Burnett, “Casaubon on Arabic and Turkish Coins: a European Network of Exchange.” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 86 (2024): 95–137. https://doi.org/10.1086/732274
Federica Gigante, “A Medieval Islamic Astrolabe with Hebrew Inscriptions in Verona: The Seventeenth-Century Collection of Ludovico Moscardo.” Nuncius 39 (2024): 163–192. https://doi.org/10.1163/18253911-bja10095
Federica Gigante, “The rediscovered Islamic manuscripts of the Cospi Museum in the University Library of Bologna.” Journal of the History of Collections 35 no. 2 (2023): 211–226. https://doi.org/10.1093/jhc/fhac038
Book chapters
Federica Gigante. “Medici Patronage and Exotic Collectibles in the Seventeenth Century: the Cospi Collection.” In Medici Patronage and Exotic Collectibles in the Seventeenth Century, edited by Francesco Freddolini and Marco Musillo, 48–66. London, New York: Routledge, 2020.
Federica Gigante. “New and rare items coming from India and Turkey : Changing perceptions of Islamic artefacts in early modern Italy.” In Constantinople as Center and Crossroad, edited by Olof Heilo and Ingela Nilsson, 170–78. Stockholm: The Swedish Research Institute in Istanbul, 2019.
Federica Gigante. “Trading Islamic artworks in seventeenth-century Italy: the case of the Cospi Museum.” In The Mercantile Effect: on Art and Exchange in the Islamicate World during the 17th-18th centuries, edited by Sussan Babaie and Melanie Gibson, 74–85. London: Gingko Library, 2017.
Forthcoming Publications
Federica Gigante, “The Construction of Celestial Globes According to al-Sufi’s Tradition”, in Ulugh Beg’s Manuscript of ‘Abd al-Raḥmān al-Ṣūfī, Book of Fixed Stars (Arabe 5036). Müller und Schindler.
Federica Gigante, “A Museum Through the Centuries: The Location, Layout and Transfer of the Cospi Museum.” Journal of the History of Collection.
Diversity and Creativity in the Italian Renaissance (Journal Special Issue), edited by Matteo Chirumbolo, Federica Gigante, and Mary Laven.
Objects and Spaces of Encounter in the Italian Renaissance: A Sourcebook, edited by Matteo Chirumbolo, Federica Gigante, Alexandros Hatzikiriakos, Mary Laven, and Emily Michelson. London: Bloomsbury Publishing.
Curated Exhibitions
Cultures in Conversation: Precious and Rare Islamic Metalwork from The Courtauld, History of Science Museum, Oxford, and online, 9 October-10 January, 2020-21
From Istanbul to Oxford – the Origins of Coffee-Drinking in England, Ashmolean Museum, 28 September-15 March 2019-20
Dimensions: The Mathematics of Symmetry and Space, Ashmolean Museum, 16 March-9 June 2018
