Return to Europe and the Islamic World
Whether Dürer actually saw any Turks when visiting Venice in 1494–95 is not known, but he certainly copied works of art with figures in Ottoman attire, and that experience served as inspiration for his own compositions. In this case, the man's turban and dress, though not accurate, appear to have been derived from Turkish examples. The woman's turban, bare chest, and bare feet, however, are far removed from traditional female dress. It has been suggested that, despite the title long given to this print, the image was meant to represent a Gypsy couple rather than a Turkish one. The Turkish clothes no doubt evoked for Dürer something foreign and exotic.
In 1555 Lorck traveled with Ghiselin de Busbecq, the ambassador of Ferdinand I of Austria, on a three-year diplomatic mission to Constantinople. According to the inscription on this compelling portrait, and the artist's own account in a letter of 1563, Lorck portrayed the sultan from life on February 15, 1559. His rendering of the sultan's features was also used to create a full-length portrait on view in the exhibition. Many of Lorck's drawings of the customs, costumes, and architecture of the region were reproduced as woodcuts and published as a book, which is also exhibited in the gallery.
The Janissaries were an elite corps of the sultan that was made up of men given in their youth as tribute by Christians residing in Ottoman territory. These children were trained for the military, converted to Islam, and then freed. Europeans were fascinated by this well-organized standing army, beautifully uniformed and armed with muskets, axes, and grenades.The sheet shown above belongs to a series of at least 30 that combine figures in Turkish costume with exotic animals and was probably produced around the time the artist left Venice to work for the Medici in Florence. Ligozzi's dependence on the illustrated travel account of Nicolas de Nicolay, on view in the exhibition, has often been cited, yet the closest correspondences are with the drawings added to the Venetian edition of 1580, suggesting that both Ligozzi and the Venetian illustrator drew on a common source, now lost.
In the fall of 1603, soon after an embassy from Rudolf II had requested support in their struggle against the Ottomans in Hungary, Shah Abbas launched an attack against the eastern borders of the Ottoman Empire. In order to maintain close diplomatic relations with the Holy Roman Emperor during this long campaign, the Shah dispatched an ambassador to Prague, who in 1605 posed for this portrait by Rudolf's court engraver, holding his pet falcon. Sadeler must have been intrigued by Persian script, although he had some difficulty engraving the inscription that identifies the sitter as an envoy of Shah Abbas. The calligraphic cluster at left, representing the ambassador's name, could have been copied from his signet ring.
During his six-month journey through Morocco and Algeria in 1832, Delacroix recorded genre scenes, landscapes, everyday objects, and costumes in a series of compelling sketches. On his return to France, he presented his traveling companion, Charles, comte de Mornay, with an album of watercolors as a souvenir. It was disassembled to be sold at public auction in 1877. One of eleven surviving drawings from the album, A Moorish Couple on Their Terrace is an ethnographic study as well as an intimate portrayal of a Moroccan couple in traditional dress. Delacroix noted in his journal: "In many ways they are closer to Nature than we—their clothes, for instance, and the shape of their shoes. Hence there is beauty in everything they do. But we, with our corsets, narrow shoes, and tubular clothing, are lamentable objects. We have gained science at the cost of our grace."
An elaborate Turkish masquerade was staged in Rome by students at the French Academy to celebrate the Roman carnival of 1748 and recorded by Joseph-Marie Vien in a series of etchings and in drawings by Vien and other artists. The drawings appear to have been made at the same sitting, since a number of surviving sheets depict the figure shown here from slightly different angles.The masquerade participants took great pains to research their costumes in order to achieve an authentic appearance. However, the figure's pose in this case—with crossed legs and the bottom of the foot showing—would have been considered uncharacteristic and even rude in a true Turkish context. While the participants were primarily students from the Academy, there were a number of outsiders as well, such as Clément, depicted here, who may have been a French painter visiting Rome.
In 1535 Vermeyen accompanied Holy Roman Emperor Charles V on an expedition to rescue Tunis, captured in 1534 by the Ottoman Turks. This print depicts the dining habits of the Tunisian king, whom Charles reinstated as his vassal after driving Süleyman's admiral, Barbarossa, from the city. The Europeans were shocked by the Moorish custom of eating while seated on the ground, as is evident from the travel report of a member of the emperor's entourage who noted with dismay that the king and his subjects ate with their feet as close to the cloth (and the food) as were their hands. Women are shown dining with the men, which suggests that there is an element of fantasy in this representation.
For most of the 1840s, Lewis lived in Egypt, where he famously adopted aspects of a pasha's dress and manner. Among the most accomplished of the Victorian "Orientalists," he is noted for his total mastery of the watercolor medium and his eye for rich detail. In this study for an exhibited work of the same title (Victoria and Albert Museum, London), Lewis captured the sleepy routine of a Cairo schoolroom, centered on a boy reading for a bearded teacher whose attention appears to be elsewhere. The drawing concentrates on the faces and turbans of the seated students and indicates the setting broadly, using the brown paper to suggest unadorned walls and floor and to provide a base for quickly brushed costume elements and the masterfully rendered wood grain of the teacher's desk. In contrast to Lewis's finished watercolors, with their elaborate detailing, this study demonstrates his rapid, informal use of the medium.
The use of exotic ornament by European craftsman was encouraged by the development of high-quality color lithographic printing in the mid-19th century. This page belongs to a set of prints issued by Racinet entitled L'Ornement Polychrome (vol. 1, 1869; vol. 2, 1885–87). The hundreds of detailed images draw from a wide range of cultures and historical eras, their sources described in accompanying text. The "Arabian" sheet displayed here was based on Egyptian Mamluk manuscript illuminations of the 14th and 15th centuries.Racinet was certainly inspired by the British designer Owen Jones's groundbreaking Grammar of Ornament (1856) but was careful not to replicate it. In fact, the quality of the Frenchman's color lithography was often superior, while his text displays the 19th century's increasingly analytical approach to cultural studies.
The ancient tradition of making celestial maps can be traced back, by way of Arabic sources, to classical ones. Dürer's two maps, this one and another of the Southern Hemisphere, derive from an Arabic type that depicted each hemisphere separately. His direct source was two richly decorated charts of the stars made in Nuremberg in 1503. Dürer's own additions to that design include the portraits of early astronomers in each corner: Aratus Cilix, Ptolemeus Aegyptius (Ptolemy), M. Mamlius Romanus (Marcus Manilius), and Azophi Arabus (Al-Sufi).
Before a panorama of the city of Constantinople, a lengthy procession winds its way toward the minareted Fatih Mosque on the left horizon. The mosque houses the tomb of Fatih Sultan Mehmet, the Ottoman conqueror of Constantinople. Most significant among the riders is Sultan Süleyman the Magnificent, shown in strict profile on the right. The image is part of an extensive frieze, composed of seven scenes and measuring about fifteen feet in length, which has provided valuable testimony to the appearance not only of Ottoman architecture but also of the major monuments of Constantine's city following its fall in 1453.Coecke traveled with an expedition to Constantinople in 1533. The woodcut frieze was published by the artist's widow three years after his death and twenty years after he first executed the designs.