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Reflecting on the Turk in Late Sixteenth-Century Venetian Portrait

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Reflecting on the Turk in Late Sixteenth-Century Venetian Portrait WARNING CONCERNING COPYRIGHT RESTRICTIONS The copyright law of the United States (Title 17, United States Code) governs the making of photocopies or other reproductions of copyrighted materials. Under certain conditions specified in the law, libraries and archives are authorized to furnish a photocopy or other reproduction. One of these specified conditions is that the photocopy or reproduction is not to be “ used for any purpose other than private study, scholarship, or research.” Anyone using, a photocopy or reproduction for purposes in excess of “ fair use,” may be liable for copyright infringement. Reflecting on the Turk 1n late sixteenth-century Venetian portrait books BRONWEN WILSON COSTUMES AND CUSTOMS OF THE 'TURKS' r. o ,;· On g September 1570 the Venetian co ntroll ed city of Nicosia on the island of Cyprus fell to th e Ottoman Empire, an event th at would precipitate the form ation of the Holy League and the Battle of Lepanto tl1e following year.' T he renewed threat incited the prolific author Francesco Sansovin o to press the Venetia n Senate to move against the Ottoman Turks in a 'just' war whose successfu l outcome had been widely prophe ied and enjoyed entl1u ias ti c public support. 2 During the same months, Sansovino addressed 'Christian soldiers' in his l njimnatione, an ill usu·ated tract in which th e autl1 or's more characteristic admiration for Ottoman military virtu was superseded by a pointed religious rhetoric (fi gure 1). 3 He illustrated the text with woodcuts of Ottoman military men to show his readers tl1 at th e 'Turks' (the nomenclature for Muslims ratl1er than a specific ethnic identity) were made 'of bones and fl esh like you'.4 On tl1 e one hand, the figures set forth physical commonality; wh il e on the otl1 er hand, the Ottomans' costumes appeared 'strange' - a perception encouraged by the text - and provided Veneti ans with visual indicators of the 'evil and bestial' natures of their adver ari es. If the woodcuts helped both to fom e!Jt military fervor and popul ar aggression, tl1 e tension between sameness and difference expresses a con­ tradiction felt by th e Venetians in th e face of the Turks who were too familiar to be made exotic.5 Sansovin o ass ured his readers of tl1 c veracity of the images by maintaining that th ese were drawn from life. In fact, these woodcuts were copied after engravings tl1at Figure 1. Francesco Sansovino, Delo, 1570. British Library, London. circul ated in a costume book, Les qualre premiers Lim·es des navigations el !Jiregrinations orientales, first published in 1567 (fi gure 2). Foll owing his extensive travels tl1roughout the suggested by Nicolay in his preface where he explains that Ottoman Empire, Nicolas de Nicolay, the French royal 'each species of beast ... is bounded within particular parts geographer, compiled this coll ection of 6o figures of men of the world' and this is 'evidence that man is tl1e onl y 6 and women from a vari ety of ethnic gToups. Each social animal that was made [by God] for all the world'. In the category is illustrated by a sin o-le costume tl1at is identified wake of discoveries of worlds unknown to Europeans, and in by a label and explain ed in the accompanying text. Customs striking contrast with tl1 e regional variations seen in flora and habits of foreigners (including sexual practices, reli gious and fauna, tl1 e contours of the human body, unexpectedl y beliefs, and burial cu tom ) were associated with the body, and perhaps surprisingly, appeared to be universal. Thus, and these performative aspects of identity were described in costume was charged witl1 articulating geographical differ­ the text. By contrast, the extraordinary sartorial display seen ences. During th e second half of tl1 e sixteenth century, in tl1 e engravings provided the means to distinguish between printed costume books appeared across Europe in wh ich bodies, to highlight cultural differences. This sLTategy is illustrators called attention to tl1 e foreignness of distant lands WORD & IM AGE, VOL. 1 9, NOS. I & 2 , J ANUARY- J UNE 2003 Wurd & lmngr ISS!\ 0266 6'.!86 C 2003 Taylor & Francis Ltd h t 1p: I I www. ta ndf.co. uk I jou rna Is/ t fl 02666286. h tm I foreign. However, it was the absence of a European class system that fu eled his diatribe. 'They acknowledge neither their father nor mother, like real barbarians and peasants', Sansovino exclaims, warning readers that the Turk 'would murder the nobles'. " Although a monarchy, the Ottoman Empire was closed to the privil eges familiar to Emopean aristocrats. An Ottoman victory at Cyprus threatened the loss of property but, more significantly, the Turks' rejection of blood descent and the equality given to children regardless of birth undermined the very foundations of the Venetian oligarchs, whose exclusive authm;ty was legitimized by noble ancestry. 12 Genealogy became more important than ever in the second half of the century as the growing wealth of the citizen class proved a threat to the status of the nobles. Restricting marriage to a single son and daughter was one re ponse, since this enabled higher dowries and thus more prestigious unions between pau·ician families. 13 This context established th e audience for two of Sansovino's other books. In 1565, only a few years before the frljo1matione, he published his L'lzistoria di casa Orsina, a history of the noble Roman family. 14 The same concern with genealogy also charac­ terizes his famous 1582 publication, Origine efatti dellefamiglie illustri d'Italia.15 THE USES AND EFFECTS OF PORTRAITS If the body was seen to be universal, as Nicolay proposed, and it was costume that rendered differences visible, then what about physiognomy? The consequence of this question Figure 2. Nicolas de Nicolay, Deify, 1568. British Library, London. is demonstrated by the frontispiece of a popular pamphlet, printed in Venice in 1580, to which the printer has added a mall , bust-length portrait of a man witl1 the name 'Selin', by depicting an array of protruding appendages and head­ representing Selim n (reigned 1566- 74; figure 3).'6 Although dresses that contrasted with the smooth contours ofEmopean the figure is clearly identified as a Turk by his turban and attire.' Serrated silhouettes came to designate the distinctive­ beard, it is the caption and not the crude facial features ness ofTurks in costume prints, a visual strategy that conu·asts that would have prompted viewers to recognize the sultan with the emphasis on color, size of turban, and length of held responsible for war. Despite the generic quality of the beard that was deployed at the Ottoman court. 8 i\!Ioreover, woodcut, the image clearly agitated at least one reader who although Nicolay often described the colors of the cosh1mes, slas hed the face of the sultan with a pen as if wielding a extant hand-colored editions indicate that illuminators rarely knife. followed the text. 9 Instead the contours and poses of the In anotl1er woodcut, printed after the war, Selim - figures became archetypes, and these were replicated, even again identified by name - is about to be snared by Charon traced, in at least eight costume books published by J60I. 10 as retributive justice for events foll owing the siege of These pictorial strategies thereby became tandard. The use Famagousta on Cyprus (figure 4). Following the capitulation of a caption, the isolation of the figure on the page, the to the Ottoman fl eet, as one eye-witness recounted, the emphasi on the contours of the cosh1me, the graphic clarity, Venetian Provveditore Marcantonio Bragadin was fl ayed and the reproductive medium of print worked together to alive by order of the sultan's general, and his skin was stuffed reduce a complex variety of Ottoman subj ects to generic with straw and raised on a mast as a symbol of the Venetian types. loss. 17 The unexpected victory of the Venetians in the ensuing In Sansovino's copies, Nicolay's engravings have been battle created a moment of rejuvenated pride, briefl y reduced in scale and simplified in detail. The woodcuts rupturing the myth of tl1e invincibility of the Turks. 18 The enabled Sansovino to reassert boundaries and to shape high cost of financial reparati ons paid to th e Ottomans for allegiances by illustrating what con tituted the Turks as peace 111 ' 573 underscored Venetian economic dependence 39 \' I D J,S P'E RAT I 0 N E a . I • DI SELIM GRAN TVRCO , . per I~ perdita della fua Armata,. il 'lual . :·: dolcn~ofi di OcchiaU, & di fc A )'7./,:J"f ····: c _, · · . / fteJfo & d'altri; -- .:L-#,1_ :.,Je\.l-};11 il •lc tll~:-t- I 1i. ~~... ' I • :S'v~ - .:·- RAC.CONTA COSE . DEGNE/ : K- ,d'elfer ihtefe. Can vn'Dialogo di Ca- · t : .ro~_ te, & Caracofa, &-:altte com­ " . · pofitioni piaceuolifsime nel · mcdcfim~ genere., '' . ~·· · .... ,. ' . J ., -·· J ·.: . ~TAMFATA IN VENETIA. - Figure 3· Anonymous, Selim, 1580. British Library, London. - . .. ·- ~ . ..._ . -· . Figure 4· Anonymous, SeLim, 1575. Briti h Library, London. on stable r e l ~ tions. '9 In the print, the heroic nude body of the Venetian skewered on the stake ets into relief the fleshy, undefin ed, but sumptuously decorated body of Selim. Once '595· Remarkably, by the beginning of the seventeenth again, the reader's presence is evidenced by the defacing century, the Turks were even described as 'saints' - albeit of th e sultan, whose head is litera ll y excised from his body in contrast with the evils of the Spanish and the J esuits below.
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