The Sultan’s World according to Renaissance Art: at BOZAR Europe welcomes the Ottomans

“The Sultan’s World, The Ottoman Orient in Renaissance Art” is a very accurate exhibition handling a subject – the representation in European arts of the Islamic/Turkish ‘other’ between ca. 1420 till ca. 1620 – that if not limited to an academic and historical exposition could also create fruitful links to the most crucial topics of discussion today. Currently set up at BOZAR in Brussels, but moving to Krakow later this year, the show presents about 160 artworks and valuable objects borrowed from major institutions across Europe (notable is the presence of Austrian, German and English lenders), divided into seven thematic sections: A Changing World, which depicts the entry of Ottomans in the European consciousness thanks to the Empire’s successful expansionism; Visual Polemics, in which the imagery of the Turk is showed in the context of Christianity’s own political agenda (both in Catholic and Protestant traditions or even in the invective between the two); Going East: Pilgrims, Captives and Diplomats, presenting how the knowledge of Ottomans available in continental Europe came from those who were either voluntarily or violently misplaced; Artist’s Travels, about the role of the European artists living in Constantinople; Depicting the Sultan, on the representation of the Ottoman ruler; The Lure of the Orient, showing examples of the exoticism of oriental motifs in European applied arts; The Ottoman Orient and European Courtly Culture, about Ottoman influences in court feasts.

 

This thematic set up of the show generally manages to illustrate the various modes of representation at the time and in particular how Ottoman figures and imageries were also exploited to serve political scopes in various ways. The strongest example of this trend is probably a Dutch pendant from the mid 16th century, shaped as the Ottoman crescent bearing the words “Rather Turk Than Papist”, which would be worn by Protestant priests and sailors to declare their political and religious struggle against the Spanish dominance. Taken together, the sections also explore how images circulated in Renaissance Europe and the influence of Venetian Gentile Bellini on the depiction of the Sultan by younger artists is the perfect case study. Possibly the first major European artist to have lived in Constantinople after the Ottoman conquest in 1453, Gentile portrayed the ruler Mehmet II in 1480 (the painting has been borrowed from the National Gallery in London even though a different version is also kept at the Museum of Islamic Art in Doha) and returned to Venice after a year, bringing paintings and drawings that would serve as important source of knowledge for artists such as Albrecht Dürer. Even though the direct influence of the Ottomans in Europe was mostly on Venetian and Habsburg bordering territories, the empire also stretched far into Poland-Lithuania, Bohemia and Hungarian dominance and the exhibition prides itself to include artworks from those landscapes too. In this regard, the portrait (1583) by Polish artist Martin Kober of Stephen Báthory, King of Transylvania and later Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth ruler, shows how strong the influence of Ottoman styles was on the costumes worn by nobles in these lands at the time.

 

As mentioned, The Sultan’s World, The Ottoman Orient in Renaissance Art is a very accurate exhibition, politely illustrating its subjects. However, especially in the case of a sensitive topic such as the presence of the Islamic “other” in Europe and its political and artistic representation, this curatorial efficiency in exposing the past left us with the sense that a step further should have been taken towards a less historical illustration, proposing a more critical thesis or a reflection into the contemporary. The decision of limiting the show to a particular period in history as explained by the organisers in their introductory text satisfied us only partially: “the Renaissance is a period of great openness towards the Orient while being the moment of maximum expansion of the Orient into Europe”. Nothing of this can be rejected, but why not extending to its relation with the current state of things? The past after all, when not implicitly or explicitly connected to the contemporary, often runs the risk of simply functioning as a cabinet of curiosities, which in the case of this exhibition and its political implications shouldn’t be sufficient.

 

It is then important to consider the show at BOZAR in its broader context: a series of events called Ottomans & Europeans which will also see the participation of contemporary art establishments such as Witte de With in Rotterdam and Cittadellarte – Fondazione Pistoletto in Biella. With conferences and artist’s residencies already on the agenda, we are confident these institutions will be able to draw the needed links between the past on display in Brussels and our present through contemporary artistic practices, while keeping an eye on those that specifically come from today’s Turkey (see for example a comprehensive group exhibition of Turkish contemporary artists that will be soon opened in Doha at the Alriwaq Gallery).

 

Still in the context of the broader initiative Ottomans & Europeans, what we found particularly remarkable about “The Sultan’s World, The Ottoman Orient in Renaissance Art” is the participation of Turkish writer Elif Shafak, who contributed to the exhibition audioguide and catalogue by adding her personal comments to some of the pieces on display. Her attention to “small histories” as seen in some of the prints (e.g. the so called “Turkish Family” by Albrecht Dürer or “Landsknechts with Camels and Turkish prisoners” by Erhard Schön) and her approach on the painted representation of Sultan’s wives as a starting point for a discussion on the voice of the voiceless, were truly inspiring moments and made us wish that more and more art institutions would consider collaborating with the world of literature in the future.

July 18, 2015