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The Flemish Baroque painter Peter Paul Rubens produced around 1,500 artworks, and a new research project explores the Islamic themes in his art. Dr Adam Sammut discusses why the Ottoman Empire\u2019s influence on Rubens has been at the periphery of research, and what it reveals about the early modern understanding of cultural identity. Dr Nil Palabiyik has been researching the artist, musician and linguist Ali Bey who was taken as a war captive from Poland and placed at the palace school in Constantinople. He became a key figure at court, bridging cultural differences between east and west through his collections of Ottoman music and translation of the bible.\n \nDr Adam Sammut is a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow in History of Art at the University of York. His current project is called \u2018Rubens and Islam: Global exchange and European identity in early modern Antwerp.\n \nDr Nil Palabiyik is Lecturer in Medieval and Early Modern Studies at Queen Mary University of London. In 2023 she was awarded the Philip Leverhulme prize and is the author of \u2018Silent Teachers: Turkish Books and Oriental Learning in Renaissance Europe, 1544-1680\u2019.\n \nDr Sarah Jilani is a Lecturer in English at City, University of London, looking at post-colonial world literatures and film and was a New Generation Thinker on the scheme run by the BBC and Arts and Humanities Research Council to put research on the radio.\n \nThis New Thinking episode of the Arts & Ideas podcast was made in partnership with the Arts and Humanities Research Council, part of UKRI. You can find more on BBC Sounds and in a collection on Radio 3\u2019s Free Thinking programme website called New Research with discussions on topics ranging from disability in music and theatre to why we talk

Producer: Martha Owen