Western travelers, eastern antiquities, and the image of the Turk in early modern Europe

Journal of Early Modern History

Volumn 7, Issue 1-2, 2003, Pages 89-119

  Wunder, Amanda ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN MADISON   (United States)

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EID: 17344371369     PISSN: 13853783     EISSN: 15700658     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1163/157006503322487368     Document Type: Article

References (89)

1. An early version of this paper was presented at the 2000 Sixteenth Century Studies Conference in Cleveland, Ohio, and I am grateful to my co-panelists and the members of the audience for their thoughtful comments. I also thank Anthony Grafton, James Amelang, and Gen Liang for their insightful readings of previous drafts; Baki Tezcan for invaluable bibliography; and Tine Meganck for fruitful conversations about early modern European costume books. The Princeton University Department of History generously subsidized the illustrations that accompany this article.
2. Augier Ghislain de Busbecq, The Turkish Letters, ed. Charles Thornton Foster and F. H. Blackburne Daniell, in The Life and Letters of Ogier Ghiselin de Busbecq (London, 1881), 1:136, 141-42.
3. Busbecq, 1:416-17.
4. On Cyriacus's efforts to sway important rulers to intervene and preserve monumental antiquities, see the life of Cyriacus by his childhood friend Francesco Scalamonti, Vita Vin Clarissimi et Famosissimi Kyriaci Anconitani, ed. and trans. Charles Mitchell and Edward W. Bodnar (Philadelphia, 1996), 127, 131.
5. Paul Coles, The Ottoman Impact on Europe (London, 1968), 145-52.
6. On the image and influence of the Turk in France, see Clarence Dana Rouillard, The Turk in French History, Though, and Literature (1520-1660) (Paris, 1940);
7. and for the contrasting story of England-which had much less direct contact with the East in the era of the Renaissance-see Samuel C. Chew, The Crescent and the Rose: Islam and England during the Renaissance (New York, 1937).
8. This definition of the antiquarian comes from Arnaldo Momigliano's classic essay, "Ancient History and the Antiquarian," 1-39 in Studies in Historiography (London, 1966), 6.
9. See Roberto Weiss, The Renaissance Discovery of Classical Antiquity (Oxford, 1969) on the rise of antiquarianism in Italy;
10. and, on the development of scientific antiquarianism (that is, archaeology), see Alain Schnapp, The Discovery of the Past: The Origins of Archaeology, trans. Ian Kinnes and Gillian Vamdell (London, 1996), 132-38, 179-219.
11. In Giovanni Paolo Marana's Letters Writ by a Turkish Spy (1684), for example, the author depicted his fictitious Turkish character as a sensitive antiquarian so that the protagonist could win credibility as a civilized commentator on European society.
12. See Robert Schwoebel's fundamental book on the era immediately preceding the one treated here: The Shadow of the Crescent: The Renaissance Image of the Turk (1453-1517) (Nieuwkoop, 1967).
13. For a brief history of Western travel to Constantinople from the Middle Ages through the nineteenth century, see Jean Ebersolt, Constantinople byzantine et les voyageurs du Levant (Paris, 1918).
14. e siècles): Bibliographie, itinéraires et inventaire des lieux habités (Ankara, 1991).
15. Halil Inalcik, "The Ottoman State: Economy and Society, 1300-1600," 9-409 in An Economie and Social History of the Ottoman Empire, 1300-1914, ed. Halil Inalcik with Donald Quataert (Cambridge, UK, 1994), 209.
16. Eyn Manung der Cristenheit widder die Durken (An Urgent Appeal to Christendom Against the Turks), commonly known as the Türkenkalender, was printed in the same type as Gutenberg's 36-line Bible and can be attributed to Gutenberg's workshop, if not to the master printer himself. For a brief discussion of this attribution, see Simon Eckehard, The Türkenkalender (1454) Attributed to Gutenberg and the Strasbourg Lunation Tracts (Cambridge, MA, 1988), 10-11.
17. As an indication of the size of this literature, there are some 2,463 bibliographic entries of such "Turcica" in Carl Göllner, Turcica: Die europäisch Türkenaucke des XVI. Jahrhunderts, vols. 1-2 (Bucuresti, 1961-1978).
18. On German Flugschriften see John Bohnstedt, "The Infidel Scourge of God: The Turkish Menace as Seen by German Pamphleteers of the Reformation Era," Transactions of the American Philosophcal Society 58 (1968): 1-56;
19. e siècle," 451-70 in Venezia e l'Oriente fra tardo Medioevo e Rinascimento, ed. Agostino Pertusi (Florence, 1966).
20. Arnaldo Momigliano, "The Place of Herodotus in the History of Historiography," 127-42 in Studies in Historiography (London, 1966), 137.
21. John Stell, "The Epistle Dedicatory," in Nicholas de Nicolay, The navigations, peregrinations and voyages, made into Turkic by Nicholas Nicholay Daulphinois, Lord of Arfeuile, trans. T. Washington the Younger (London, 1585), [unfoliated front matter].
22. Anthony Pagden uses the term "commensurability" in his European Encounters with the New World: From Renaissance to Romanticism (New Haven, 1993).
23. Busbecq, 1:129.
24. Busbecq, 1:172.
25. Plantin, who published the first Latin edition of The Turkish Letters as the Itinera Constantinopolitanum et Amasianum, printed Busbecq's second letter in 1582. All four letters were published together for the first time in a Paris edition of 1589, and many more editions followed with translations into Czech (1594), Polish (1597), German (1596), Spanish (1610), French (1646), Flemish (1652), and English (1694).
26. For catalogues of editions, see Yérasimos (1991), 239-42;
27. also see Forster and Daniell, 2:288-91.
28. Busbecq, 1:89, 172-73, 314.
29. Busbecq, 1:123.
30. Leonardo Bruni, Panegyric to the City of Florence, trans. Benjamin G. Kohl, 135-75 in The Earthly Republic: Italian Humanists on Government and Society, ed. Benjamin G. Kohl and Ronald G. Witt with Elizabeth B. Welles (Philadelphia, 1978), 136.
31. Busbecq, 1:122-23, 125. Busbecq defended his giddy description of the dancing elephant by pointing to the classical precedents of Seneca and Pliny's writings about extraordinary pachyderms, 128.
32. Manuel Chrysoloras, Comparison of Old and New Rome, trans. Christine Smith, 99-215 in Architecture in the Culture of Early Humanism: Ethics, Aesthetics, and Eloquence, 1400-1470 (New York, 1992), 206.
33. On ruins: See Rose Macaulay, Pleasure of Ruins (London, 1953);
34. and, most recently, Christopher Wood, In Ruins (London, 2001).
35. Chrysoloras, 210, 200.
36. Nicolay (1585), f. 50v.
37. Chrysoloras, 213.
38. Busbecq, 1:129-30, 252.
39. Pierre Gilles was in Constantinople from about 1547 to 1551; he traveled there in the company of the French ambassador d'Aramon, who was on a mission to solidify the French alliance with Süleyman and to convince the sultan to wage war against the Holy Roman Empire. D'Aramon's retinue also included Nicholas de Nicolay (discussed at length below), André Thevet, and Pierre Belon, all of whom also published accounts of their travels. On the d'Aramon embassy, see Frédéric Tinguely, L'écriture du Levant à la Renaissance: Enquête sur les voyageurs fiançais dans l'empire de Soliman le Magnifique (Geneva, 2000);
40. on Belon in particular, see George Huppert, The Style of Pans: Renaissance Origins of the French Enlightenment (Bloomington, IN, 1999), 1-20.
41. Pierre Gilles, The Antiquities of Constantinople, 2d ed., trans. John Ball (New York, 1988), 51, 219-20, 222.
42. Gilles, 61-66, 82-84, 135.
43. Gilles, 222.
44. Busbecq, 1:149.
45. As defined by Peter Burke, the "Renaissance sense of the past" included an understanding of the concept of anachronism, a critical approach to evidence, and a focus on causation as historical explanation. Peter Burke, The Renaissance Sense of tL· Past (New York, 1969) 1.
46. Scalamonti, 131;
47. Rodolfo Lanciani, The Destruction of Ancient Rome (New York, 1899), esp. ch. 16, "Marble-Cutters and Lime-Burners of Mediaevel and Renaissance Rome" and ch. 19, "The Monuments in the Latter Part of the Sixteenth Century."
48. De topographia Constantinopoleos et de illius antiquitatibus libri quatuor was first published by Guillaume Rouille at Lyon in 1561 and again in Leiden by Elsevir in 1661.
49. On Ligorio's place in the milieu of Roman antiquarianism, see Anthony Grafton, "The Ancient City Restored: Archaeology, Ecclesiastical History, and Egyptology," 87-123 in Rome Reborn: The Vatican Library and Renaissance Culture, ed. Anthony Grafton (Washington, D.C, 1993), 106-110;
50. for a discussion of Ligorio's sources and methods, see Howard Burns, "Pirro Ligorio's Reconstruction of Ancient Rome: The ANTEIQVAE VRBIS IMAGO of 1561," 19-92 in Pirro Ligorio: Artist and Antiquarian, ed. Robert W. Gaston (Milan, 1988).
51. Gilles, 216-17, 20-25, 221.
52. On the uneven development of accurate images of Constantinople in the fifteenth century, see Ian R. Manners, "Constructing the Image of a City: The Representation of Constantinople in Christopher Buondelmonti's Liber Insularum Archipelagi," Annals of the Association of American Geographers 87 (1997): 72-102.
53. For the evolution of the specific (as opposed to the conventional) city view, see Juergen Schulz, 'Jacopo de'Barbari's View of Venice: Map Making, City Views, and Moralized Geography Before the Year 1500," The Art Bulletin 60 (1978): 425-74, especially pp. 458-62.
54. Charles Talbot, "Topography as Landscape in Early Printed Books," 105-16 in The Early Illustrated Book: Essays in Honor of Lessing J. Rosenwald, ed. Sandra Hindman (Washington, D.C., 1982), 114.
55. Though the drawing is dated 1559, when Lorck was in Constantinople, the Lorck expert Erik Fischer has determined from watermarks that the drawing could not have been executed until after the artist had returned to Europe, most likely around 1561. Erik Fischer, Melchior Lorck: Drawings from the Evelyn Collection at Stonor Park, England, and from the Department of Prints and Drawings, the Royal Museum of Fine Arts, Copenhagen, Catalogue (Copenhagen, 1962), 24-25.
56. Fischer surmises that Lorck intended for his view to be published in a very large print. Erik Fischer, "Melchior Lorck: A Dane as Imperial Draughtsman in Constantinople in the 1550s," 31-43 in The Arabian Journey: Danish Connections with the Islamic World Over a Thousand Years, ed. Kjeld con Folsach, et al. (Århus, 1996), 34. In a 1610 engraving of the Leiden library by Willem Swanenburg, Lorck's prospect is distinctly visible hanging on the wall, though it is impossible to make out details of the drawing in the print.
57. Unlike Lorck, Bellini never created a composite view of Ottoman Constantinople. Julian Raby, Venice, Dürer and the Oriental Mode (London, 1982), 21.
58. Busbecq never recorded Lorck's name in his Turkish Letters, but he did mention acquiring a picture of the pillar at the Avret Bazaar, which suggests that he had artists making drawings of the antiquities that he saw in his travels. Busbecq, 1:126.
59. Autobiographical letter by Melchior Lorck (Jan. 1, 1563), trans. Erik Fischer, 10-13 in Melchior Lorck in Turkey (Copenhagen, 1990), 11.
60. Lorck in Fischer (1990), 13.
61. There are only five known surviving copies of Lorck's Wolgerissene und geschnittene Figuren (Hamburg, 1619).
62. On the copy that I consulted at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, see Alexandrine N. St. Clair, "A Forgotten Record of Turkish Exotica," The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 27 (1969): 411-23;
63. and the same author's The Image of the Turk in Europe (New York, 1973).
64. For a biography of the obelisks of Constantinople, see Erik Iversen, Obelisks in Exile, vol. 2, The Obelisks of Istanbul and England (Copenhagen, 1972).
65. Presumably there was a second Turk holding the other end of Lorck's scroll in a destroyed section of the drawing. Hans Harbeck, Melchior Lorichs: Ein Beitrag zur deutschen Kunstgeschichte des 16. Jahrhunderts (Hamburg, 1911), 96.
66. Coecke's view of Constantinople was printed in Antwerp under the title Ces moeurs et fachons de faire de Turcz avecq les regions y appartenents, ont esté au vif contrefaictes par Pierre Coeck d'Alost. The print is altogether about 17.5' high and 15' wide. All the prints are reproduced in a slightly reduced format in William Stirling Maxwell, The Turks in MDXXXIII: A series of drawings made in that year at Constantinople by Peter Coeck of Aelst and published from woodblocks, by his widow, at Antwerp in MDLIII (London and Edinburgh, 1873).
67. Karel van Mander, The Lives of the Illustrious Netherlandish and German Painters, from the first edition of the Schilder-boeck (1603-1604), ed. Hessel Miedema, (Doornspijk, 1994), 1:133.
68. Leon Battista Alberti, On Painting, trans. Cecil Grayson (New York, 1991), 71-76.
69. Chrysoloras, 201.
70. Alberti followed Varro's prescription for avoiding more than nine dinner guests in painting as well as at supper. Aberti, 75-76.
71. Van Mander, 133.
72. On travel literature and ethnography see Joan-Pau Rubiés, "New Worlds and Renaissance Ethnology," History and Anthropology 6 (1993): 157-97.
73. Van Mander, 132-33.
74. Erwin Panofsky asserted that the bearded Turk in Albrecht Dürer's 1518 etching Landscape with a Cannon was a self-portrait. Erwin Panofsky, The Life and Art of Albrecht Dürer, rev. ed. (Princeton, 1995), 197.
75. Alexandrine St. Clair cited several cases of Turkish fashions and costumes worn in Europe, especially at court; St. Clair (1973), 10-11;
76. and Robert Schwoebel intriguingly suggested that it was not unusual for European travelers to affect Turkish ways back home, writing that "more than one voyager returned home attired in Turkish dress complete with turban." Schwoebel, 178.
77. Busbecq, 1:155-59.
78. Jost Amman, Theatrum Mulierum (Frankfort, 1586)
79. ed. Alfred Aspland, The Theatre of Women, The Holbein Society's Facsimile Reprints (Manchester, England, 1872), xxxviii.
80. Yérasimos (1991), 224.
81. Marie-Christine Gomez-Géraud and Stéphane Yérasimos, Dans l'empire de Soliman le Magnifique (Paris, 1989), 11.
82. "La raison veut, et nature semble le commander à l'homme, de chercher, visiter et enquérir, savoir et connaître tous les êtres, toutes les parties et mansions de son universelle habitation." Nicolas de Nicolay, Les navigations, pérégrinations et voyages faits en la Turquie, in Gomez-Géraud and Yérasimos (1989), 44-45.
83. Nicolay (1585), f. 32v; 8v-9r.
84. "Tels qu'ils sone et que je les ai vus, les représentant en figure portraite auprès du naturel." Nicolay in Gomez-Géraud and Yérasimos (1989), 51.
85. The captive Georgievitz and the ambassador Busbecq were equally silent about skin color. Cf. Richard G. Cole, "Sixteenth-Century Travel Books as a Source of European Attitudes Toward Non-White and Non-Western Culture," Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 116 (1972): 59-67.
86. St. Clair (1973) concluded that the image of the Turk actually became increasingly conventionalized in sixteenth-century Europe; see St. Clair, The Image of the Turk in Europe, 10.
87. Facsimile as Jost Amman, 293 Renaissance Woodcuts for Artists and Illustrators, with an introduction by Alfred Werner (New York, 1968).
88. For example, Leslie Luebbers has traced the similarities between Nicolay's pictures of women and nineteenth-century paintings by artists like Ingres. Leslie Luebbers, "Documenting the Invisible: European Images of Ottoman Women, 1567-1867," The Print Collector's Newsletter 24 (1993): 1-7.
89. On the eighteenth-century Orientalist vision of Easterners as both lacking a changing history of their own and as failing to understand the concept of history, see Edward W. Said, Orientalism (New York, 1994), esp. 240, 253.