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Europe, China and Istanbul: the Albums in a Broader Perspective

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Europe, China and Istanbul: the Albums in a Broader Perspective Europe, China and Istanbul: The Albums in a Broader Perspective ⸪ Gülru Necipolu - 9789004323483 Downloaded from Brill.com03/06/2019 09:42:32PM via Harvard University Gülru Necipolu - 9789004323483 Downloaded from Brill.com03/06/2019 09:42:32PM via Harvard University Chapter 20 Persianate Images between Europe and China: The “Frankish Manner” in the Diez and Topkapı Albums, c. 1350–1450 Gülru Necipoğlu The so-called Saray albums in Berlin and system” collapsed with the fragmentation Istanbul have mainly been examined to of the Mongol empire, its artistic reper- map the transformation of the Persianate cussions would continue to be felt long artistic tradition through an infusion of thereafter, as demonstrated by the extraor- Chinese elements in the post-Mongol era. dinary contents of the Saray albums. The fascinating Europeanizing images By taking a close look at the earliest of these albums have therefore largely examples of Europeanizing images (c. 1350– escaped attention and most of them 1450) preserved in the Diez albums and remain unpublished. This state of affairs two Topkapı albums (H. 2152, H. 2153), can partly be explained by the overwhelm- this essay attempts to reframe the Berlin ing prominence of Chinese and Sinicizing and Istanbul albums anew, within a images in the albums. Nonetheless, the wider transnational framework.2 Topkapı sidestepping of works affiliated with the Western pictorial tradition has distorted 1 Janet L. Abu-Lughod, Before European Hege­ the global outlook encompassed by the mony: The World System A.D. 1250–1350, New York albums, which originated roughly between 1989; Peter Jackson, The Mongols and the West, 1250 and 1350, when Europe and China 1221–1410, Harlow, England and New York 2005; were brought into contact by the Pax Reuven Amitai-Preiss and David O. Morgan, Mongolica.1 Although the Eurasian “world eds., The Mongol Empire and Its Legacy, Leiden and Boston 1999; Stefano Carboni and Linda Komaroff, eds., The Legacy of Genghis Khan: Author’s Note: I am grateful to Christoph Rauch Courtly Art and Culture in Western Asia, 1256–1353, for enabling me to examine the Diez albums in exhibition catalogue, Metropolitan Museum Berlin in 2010, and for inviting me to participate of Art, New York and New Haven 2002; Linda in “The Diez Albums at the Berlin State Library: Komaroff, ed., Beyond the Legacy of Genghis Current State of Research and New Perspectives” Khan, Leiden and Boston 2006. conference he co-organized with Julia Gonnella 2 This is an expanded version of a subsection in in June 2013. I also thank Gerhard Wolf for giv- my article, “The Composition and Compilation ing me the opportunity to deliver a longer ver- of Two Saray Albums Reconsidered in Light of sion of my Berlin lecture as guest faculty scholar ‘Frankish’ Images”, in a volume of studies edited at the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz – by Filiz Çağman and Selmin Kangal, accompa- Max Planck Institute in December 2013, which nying the facsimile of two interrelated Topkapı formed the basis of the present essay. I benefited albums (H. 2153 and H. 2160), MAS Matbaacılık, from comments made on both occasions and by Istanbul (forthcoming, 2016). On the Saray Thomas W. Lentz, who read a draft of this essay. albums, see Ernst Grube, “The Problem of the © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���7 | doi ��.��63/97890043�3483_0�� Gülru Necipolu - 9789004323483 Downloaded from Brill.com03/06/2019 09:42:32PM via Harvard University 532 Necipoğlu album H. 2152, formerly named after the Tabriz.5 The contents of this album, com- bibliophile prince Baysunghur (d. 1433), prising texts and images datable from the has recently been renamed the “Timurid late thirteenth through the early sixteenth workshop album” as its primary audi- century, are thought to have originated ence seems to have been the artists and mainly from the booty of Tabriz, where calligraphers of the royal scriptorium in they had ended up after circulating in Herat. Believed to have been compiled various court treasuries and workshops. there during the first half of the fifteenth These prized materials were compiled century, it mostly contains works from together with others collected in the the early Timurid courts (1370–1506).3 Ottoman palace treasury and work- Europeanizing images mounted in the shop, including early Italian Renaissance Diez albums were likely removed from engravings (c. 1460–80) and Europeanizing this album for Heinrich Friedrich von polychrome painted portraits commonly Diez, the eminent Prussian orientalist associated with the patronage of Sultan and ambassador to the Ottoman court in Mehmed II (r. 1444–46, 1451–81), which are Istanbul (1784–91).4 Since the Diez albums, not considered in the present essay.6 assembled at the turn of the eighteenth- nineteenth centuries, comprise specimens 5 On the compilation of H. 2153 (and its smaller largely detached from manuscripts kept at companion H. 2160) in the court workshop of the Topkapı Palace, they provide only indi- Selim I, and the differing codicological aspects rect clues about the original page layouts of these paired albums, see my forthcom- of these works. ing essay, “The Composition and Compilation of Two Saray Albums”. The hypothesis that As for Topkapı album H. 2153, its folios these two albums may have been assembled at most probably approximated their pres- the Ottoman court, either during the reign of ent layout in the Ottoman court workshop Bayezid II or Selim I, was first put forth in Julian shortly after 1514, when Sultan Selim I Raby, “Mehmed II Fatih and the Fatih Album”, (r. 1512–20) invaded the Safavid capital Islamic Art 1 (1981), pp. 42–49. They were alter- natively named the Fatih albums, after the Ottoman sultan Mehmed II (d. 1481), and the Istanbul Album Paintings”, Islamic Art 1 (1981), Yaʿqub Beg (d. 1490) albums, with reference to an pp. 1–30. Aqqoyunlu Turkmen ruler, because of mounted 3 David J. Roxburgh, The Persian Album, 1400–1600, works associated with them. Both labels wrongly New Haven and London 2005, pp. 85–147. There imply that the interrelated albums were com- is no evidence that a single patron prompted this piled for one of these rulers, an implication album’s assembly, pp. 88–90. contradicted by the presence of calligraphies 4 See David J. Roxburgh, “Persian Drawing, c. 1400– dating after their reigns, the latest being from 1450: Materials and Creative Procedures”, AH 917 (1511–12). Therefore in the forthcoming Muqarnas 19 (2002), pp. 44–77, especially p. 73 facsimile publication, they are referred to as n. 67; David J. Roxburgh, “Heinrich Friedrich Von “Saray albums” with inventory numbers H. 2153 Diez and His Eponymous Albums: Mss. Diez and H. 2160. A. Fols. 70–74”, Muqarnas 12 (1995), pp. 115–123, 6 The Italian engravings were collected in especially pp. 122–23. The Diez albums include Mehmed II’s court and not acquired as booty some later works dating from the sixteenth to from Tabriz, as some scholars have speculated: the eighteenth centuries, but these are easily dis- See Necipoğlu, “The Composition and Compi- tinguishable from earlier ones. lation of Two Saray Albums”; and Gülru Gülru Necipolu - 9789004323483 Downloaded from Brill.com03/06/2019 09:42:32PM via Harvard University Persianate Images Between Europe and China 533 H. 2153 can be characterized as a veri- ferred from Tabriz to his own court work- table assemblage of “wonders” (ʿajāʾib), shop must have collaborated with their as it comprises the largest known Islamic Ottoman colleagues in assembling the collection of exotica in the Chinese and bifolios of H. 2153, along with its less mon- European manners.7 It combines works umental companion, H. 2160, which lacks that represent these foreign visual idioms European and Europeanizing works. As with images attributed by inscriptions I have demonstrated elsewhere, large to old and new masters of the Persianate scale images were exclusively mounted in painting tradition, which was collectively H. 2153, with some of their scraps and embraced in the Turko-Mongol dynastic smaller specimens reserved for H. 2160, courts of the eastern Islamic lands. This which is dominated by calligraphy. This unique album thereby constructs an art systematic selection suggests that the historical genealogy within which some respective programs and differing formats specimens of Europeanizing Ottoman of both albums were determined around court painting have been contextualized. the same time. The first and last pages of Selim I was fond of the figurative arts the latter album bear imprints of the oval and aspired to expand the Western hori- sovereignty seal of Selim I (this differs zons of the Persianate painting tradition from his round treasury seal, which con- cultivated in the Ottoman court, much tinued to be used after his death), indicat- like his grandfather Mehmed II, whom he ing that H. 2160 was already a bound codex proclaimed as his role model.8 The group in his reign. By contrast, H. 2153 lacks its of painters and calligraphers he trans- first and last pages, which were maybe stamped with seals. Composed of sym- Necipoğlu, “Visual Cosmopolitanism and Cre- metrically designed bifolios on both sides, ative Translation: Artistic Conversations with which were possibly intended to be kept in Renaissance Italy in Mehmed II’s Constanti- a box, it could have been bound as a vol- nople”, Muqarnas 29 (2012), pp. 1–81; especially ume later in the sixteenth or early seven- pp. 18–20, p. 65 n. 94 and n. 95. teenth centuries.9 7 The only studies that discuss the European While examining the bifolios of this and Europeanizing works are two pioneer- album, dismantled in the twentieth cen- ing essays by Julian Raby: “Mehmed II Fatih tury, I discovered to my surprise a rather and the Fatih Album”, and “Samson and Siyah Qalam”, Islamic Art 1 (1981), pp.
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