Francesco Sansovino

As part of a larger project on the history of relations between Christians and Muslims in the modern age, this essay aims to shed light on the figure and work of Francesco Sansovino (Rome 1521- Venice 1583), writer, translator and curator of texts as well as founder of print shop which over a period of roughly twenty years published more than fifty works. Sansovino was author of two texts (Historia universale, 1560-61 and Annali turcheschi 1571) which deal with the history, customs, culture and religion of the Ottoman civilization and which enjoyed a wide circulation. The essay aims to show how within the panorama contemporary publications these works of Sansovino’s were intended, above all, to disseminate knowledge about the Ottoman Turks: an approach that was quite unlike that of ideological confrontation against the infidels following the footsteps of Paolo Giovio’s Commentario de le cose de’ Turchi , a work dedicated to emperor Charles V and published in 1531 and which served as Sansovino’s main source and model.