Representations of Elite Ottoman Women

Before the Odalisque: Renaissance Representations of Elite Ottoman Women
Author(s): Heather Madar

Source: Early Modern Women , Fall 2011, Vol. 6 (Fall 2011), pp. 1-41
Published by: Arizona State University
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/23617325
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Early Modern Women:
An Interdisciplinary Journal
2011, vol 6
Before the Odalisque: Renaissance Representations

of Elite Ottoman Women
Heather Madar
The much-mythologized
central place in European harem ofthought
Orientalist the Ottoman sultans
for centuries.1 Theoccupied a
harem, presented as an exotic world of forbidden sexuality inhabited by
compliant yet sexually voracious women, appears in literature, art, and
travel writing. While the most famous expressions of this harem fixa
tion date from later centuries,2 a focus on the harem as libidinous zone is
demonstrably present in written sources from the sixteenth century. Yet an
exploration of sixteenth-century European images turns up a surprising
dearth of imagery in this vein. While Renaissance art lacks the languid
odalisques or detailed views of the physical environment of the sultans
harem familiar from later works, a series of largely overlooked representa
tions of elite Ottoman women do exist. Dating from the mid-sixteenth
century, these images feature imagined portraits of sultanas — elite women
such as Ottoman princesses, the sultan's mother (valide sultan), or the sul
tan's preferred concubine (haseki).3 Hurrem, the wife of sultan Siileyman,
and his daughter Mihrimah appear most frequently in this genre. Yet strik
ing differences are immediately evident between their depiction and later,
more familiar, views of the harem and harem women. The women shown
in the Renaissance tradition were members of the sultan's harem, yet they
are not shown within a harem setting, nor do the images make reference to
it. Although they are visually marked as Other, largely through the atten
tion given to their exotic dress, they are also presented as women who are
of interest as individuals, possessing status and political significance.

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2 EMWJ 2011, vol. 6 Heather Madar
Beginning with the earliest encounters of the Wes

world during the Middle Ages, European writers c
licentious and Muslim women as potential sexual te
Christian men.4 The Ottoman Empire was similarly se
discourse. Early Modern European travelers made freq
beautiful yet lascivious women of the sultans harem a
activity at the bathhouse and sodomy among the Otto
sexualized image of Islam and Muslim women is reflec
fixation on the harem, particularly the sultans harem
in Istanbul, commonly referred to as the seraglio b
The imperial harem was seen as the ultimate site of s
and decadence.7
Western fictions of the harem are widely recogniz
the late seventeenth century and becoming a domin
in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.8 Accordin
harem became "the definitive topos of the Muslim wo
entire world of Islam" by the eighteenth century.9 Bec
off limits to European men, discussions of the harem w
in fantasy. Yet this very unknowability heightened th
mystery.10
"Descriptions of the seraglio," according to Alain Grosrichard, "are
alike to the point of repetition."11 They typically focus on a narrow set of
themes: the lassitude and indolence of the women, opulence and luxury,
the sexually charged atmosphere of the harem, the lustful yet cruel sultan,
and sexual perversion. From the eighteenth century on, harem discussions
also see the harem as a prison, and the women therein as oppressed.12 The
notion of the harem was also inextricably linked in the Western mind with
despotism. Peirce writes: "Europe elaborated a myth of oriental tyranny
and located its essence in the sultans harem. Orgiastic sex became a meta
phor for power corrupted."13 The harem thus became a locus of comple
mentary and overlapping Orientalist tropes.
Although harem discourse is primarily associated with a later period,
its seeds are clearly present in sixteenth-century materials, particularly
narratives of travel to Istanbul. Authors of such narratives were men from
a range of European countries who had traveled to Istanbul for numer

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Renaissance Representations of Elite Ottoman Women 3
ous reasons. Some were former captives, while others were ambassadors
or attached to diplomatic envoys sent to the sultans court by various
European powers. Their texts were often published in multiple languages
and disseminated widely, creating a shared basis of seemingly authentic
information about the Ottomans across Western Europe.14 The material
covered in these texts often overlapped with repetition of motifs and fre
quent plagiarism.15 The discussions of Ottoman women in these narratives
focus on a narrow set of themes, which largely echo the themes of later
harem discourse: the beauty of Turkish women and of the women in the
sultans harem in particular, grooming habits, Muslim marriage practices
(including a requisite discussion of polygamy), the sexually charged nature
of the harem, and unchecked female sexuality at the bath.
The sultans harem, the women who lived there, and their reported
beauty received considerable attention in Renaissance texts. Thomas
Dallam, an English organ-maker who traveled to Istanbul in 1599 at the
behest of Elizabeth I, commented that they were "verrie prettie."16 Another
common theme is the diversity of harem women and their reputed
Christian origins. Nicolas de Nicolay, who accompanied the French
ambassador to Istanbul in 1549, describes how "the wives and concubines
of the great Turk, which in number are about 200. being the most part
daughters of Christians, some being taken by courses on the seas or by
land, aswel from Grecians, Hongarians, Wallachers, Mingreles, Italians as
other Christian nations."17 As Schick comments:"This no doubt served the
important function of creating a fantasy of exogamy that was safe' because
its women were not really other."18 The function of harem women as sexual
objects for the sultans is also noted. Goughe notes that the sultans do not
typically marry and describes how in order "to satisfye their pleasure, and
libidinous lustes (wherunto in moste vile and filthy maner, they are subiect,
above all other nations)" they instead take "virgins frome all partes of the
worlde."19
An extended passage from the 1587 Faustbuch also makes clear that
the primary conception of harem women was as sexual objects. Faust, after
conjuring up a thick fog around and inside the sultans palace, enters the
harem. His sexual encounters with the most attractive of the women fol
low:

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Faustus tooke the fairest by the hand, and led her i

where after his maner hee fell to dalliance, and thus h
whole day and night: and when hee had delighted himsel
with her, hee put her away, and made his spirite bring
and so hee passed away sixe daies, hauing each day h
sundry Lady, and that of the fairest.20
The subsequent report of the event by one of the

sultan also stresses her sexual appetite: "hee lay with v
and colled us, and so delighted me that for my part,
or three times a week to serue me in such sort againe."
Sixteenth-century texts also highlight the sex
women generally. Theodore Spandounes, who wrote
tory of the Ottomans from the perspective of a Byza
spent time in Istanbul, commented on the lasciviou
women, explaining that it was for this reason that th
guarded by eunuchs.22 Several authors also give viv
activity among women at the bath, a key signifier of
female sexuality from the Renaissance. In his boo
Bassano, who was in Istanbul in the 1530s and likely s
sultans court, describes how"[T]hey intimately wash o
neighbor the other, or one sister the other: for which
love between women, due to the familiarity that de
and rubbing each other."23 Nicolay, whose discussion
dent on Bassano's, adds that "perceiving some maide o
beauty they wil not ceaste until they have found mean
and to handle and grope theme everywhere at their p
are of luxuriousness and feminine wantonness."24
The charged nature of the harem is also underlined

a stress on the forbidden and furtive glimpse. Dallam
able to gaze, unsuspected, at "thirtie of the Grand
through a grate in the wall. He describes his scopo
"stood so longe looking upon them... .that sighte did p
well," and notes how he "could desarne the skin of their
clothing.25 The illicit nature of his gaze is underlined b
of his guide, and by writers such as Ogier Ghiselin

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dor of Ferdinand I to Istanbul, who stress the inaccessibility of Ottoman

women.26
There are some significant differences between sixteenth-century

discussions of the harem and later harem discourse. In particular,
sixteenth-century texts often show an awareness of the education and
activity that occurred in the harem, which diverges from the later trope
of the passive, indolent, and even ignorant harem woman. Nevertheless,
these written sources clearly contain the germ of later harem discourse
and repeatedly explore themes that parallel its major tropes. Yet the fre
quency of harem descriptions and the sexualized portrayal of Ottoman
women in Renaissance travel literature is not matched in literary or visual
sources. Indeed, the harem is nearly absent from the visual record. There
is no equivalent genre to eighteenth-century Rococo harem imagery with
pink-cheeked sultanas holding court amid subservient odalisques or to
nineteenth-century nude odalisques and sexualized bath imagery.
Several images do suggest a nascent, yet ultimately unrealized
Renaissance harem imagery. Gentile Bellini famously was reported to have
created cose di lussuria [things of lechery/lasciviousness] as decorations for
Mehmed II's palace. While the content of these images is unknown, they
are often assumed to have been erotic, perhaps even pornographic.27 If so,
this suggests a tantalizing possibility of erotica, potentially with harem
themes, emerging from this key intersection of a European artist with an
Ottoman patron in the fifteenth century. Yet Bellini's surviving work from
his Istanbul stay and afterward rarely depicts Ottoman women — and
then only as costume studies — and does not contribute substantially to
later imagery of Ottoman women.28
Harem imagery does make an appearance in the Historia Imperatorum
Regni Turcici or Historia Turcorum (ca. 1500-1503), an illustrated manu
script belonging to Vladislav II, king of Bohemia and Hungary, which
provides a history and genealogy of the Turkish sultans. The identity of
the artist is debated, but the consensus is that he is Italian, likely from
Lombardy.29 The images from this manuscript, showing the succession of
the Ottoman sultans in medallion portraits and also in larger, full-page
narrative scenes, have passed largely unnoticed in the scholarly literature.30
While most of the sultans are shown as warlike military commanders, sul

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6 EMWJ 2011, vol 6 Heather Madar
tans Bayezid II and Murad II are instead shown rela

of their harems. Murad, for example, is shown sea
throng of women. One woman presents him with fo
postures of the others suggest dancing. Their sheer,
clearly reveals their bodies underneath (see fig. 1).
The interpolation of harem imagery into this man
Raby suggests that it might be related to a perceptio
and Murad II as less warlike, while Bauer-Eberhard no
known for a taste for pleasure.31 Yet the content of
the already well-developed European notion of the
texts, the harem is figured as a location of pleasur
excess, arranged according to the person of the su
pairing of harem scenes with war imagery also prese
in Western perceptions of the sultans as both unbr
sors and lascivious despots.32 What is surprising
their uniqueness. They are unprecedented in Renai
immediate successors.
Imagery suggestive of later depictions of the

tropes of Renaissance harem descriptions also ma
work of the Danish artist Melchior Lorich (or Lorc
Istanbul in 1555 as part of the entourage of Ogier
an ambassador of the Holy Roman Emperor, and
until 1559.33 On his return, he completed numer
images, including a series of 128 woodcuts of Turk
posthumously in 1626 as the Wolgerissene und Gesch
Drawn and Cut Figures]. Lorich's work also includ
drawings showing Turkish women's daily life. The im
such as praying, the return from Mecca, and women
a wedding and a burial. Presumably intended as prelim
a printed series, the images were never executed in pr
While Lorich's work does not explicitly treat th
his drawings suggest a harem setting or at least ha
both sixteenth-century and later harem discourse.34
eating, their indoor setting, number, youth (with th
older woman), and the intimate gesture of a girl bein

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Renaissance Representations of Elite Ottoman Women
1 M'*£i
Fig. 1. Francesco da Castello (att.), Sultan Murad II, in Historia Turcorum

ca. 1500-1503, Nuremberg, Stadtbibliothek, Ms. Solg. 31, 2, fol. 12v.

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8 BMW] 2011, vol 6 Heather Madar
tropes. An erotic charge is also apparent in a scene

ing in an indoor setting. A woman facing fronta
poses completely nude apart from a shawl draped se
body. The second woman's body curvature sugge
seemingly in the process of disrobing. A third clot
be commencing her dance. Although the written
the women are prostitutes (bulerin), the depicted
be a brothel. While prostitution was common in
brothels or formal establishments for prostitut
before the nineteenth century.35 While ambiguous,
with its high walls, ornate decoration and a pointed
magnificence and wealth, perhaps suggesting the
girls are often mentioned within discussions of t
in later Orientalist art.36 Professional female dance
existed in the Ottoman Empire, and performed at t
mansions, and imperial festivals.37 While female
Ottoman miniature sources, they are always show
figures depicted by Lorich, their disrobing clearly u
of their dance.
A final image shows three Turkish women playi

a single woman dances.38 The harp player on the lef
Wolgerissene und Geschnittene Figuren as a single f
accompanying the 1646 printing, which Fischer
from Lorich, describes the figure as a harp player an
captured Christians.39 The drawing also contains
smaller, framed image set into the upper left of the
Fischer, this should be read as a window.40 The sk
beyond shows a standing nude, a turbaned male figu
figures. The deliberate intimation of forbidden view
the glimpse into the private realm of Ottoman w
the place of the (male) viewer to whom the dancer
the suggestion of looking through a frame, also inv
charged viewing connects with themes of illicit sig
mon in harem discourse.

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Renaissance Representations of Elite Ottoman Women
!\
Sft.
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Fig. 2. Melchior Lorich, Harp Player, 1583, © Trustees of the British

Museum.

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The Lorich images and the illustrations from the H

as a group constitute a singular moment in Renaissa
Ottoman Empire and presage later image types. Denn
Lorich drawing of the dancing scene, which he interpre
suggests that the image "show[s] the germs of exoticis
here defined as a type of Orientalist imagery that "use
excuse to portray subjects and to elicit emotions that c
with European imagery," chiefly through the theme of
harem."42 These images, taken together, suggest the er
homosocial nature of the harem and convey an over
and indulgence. These were all familiar themes in conte
sources but remained largely absent in visual imagery.
Images of specific women within the Ottoman hare
the 1530s and continued as a recognizable type thro
century, yet they differ strikingly from the images d
from the more familiar representations of the harem fr
These depictions are fantasy portraits of sultanas: O
harem favorites or haseki, the sultan's mother (the val
sultans wife. Siileymans wife Hurrem, known to th
or Rossa, and Mihrimah, their daughter and Siileymans
live past infancy, are represented most frequently. Mi
referred to as Cameria or Camilla in these images.44 Th
tute a distinct, albeit largely unrecognized visual pheno
knowledge have never been considered as a group.45
visual and conceptual similarities and, taken as a group,
Renaissance conceptions of elite Ottoman women. W
feature women from the harem, their focus is not on t
site of Western desire or as an exotic setting. This is n
of awareness. The activities of these women within the
and discussed in European sources, and, in some cases, v
these women immediately precede written discussions
images nevertheless focus solely on the women themse
as political figures of individual importance and intere
women of the harem, they are not figured as harem w

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Images corresponding to this type appear in both printed and painted

forms and were created by both Italian and Northern European artists. The
images range from printed portraits of the 1530s and 1540s, to a Venetian
portraiture tradition originating in the mid-1550s, to a series of sultanas
by Lorich from 1570-1583, to images of "the favorite of the sultan" that
appeared in mid- to late sixteenth-century costume books. The images,
nevertheless, cohere visually as a group. Key features include a depiction of
the women as single figures lacking a setting or location, as youthful and
beautiful conforming to contemporary Renaissance standards of female
beauty, and as clad in exotic costume and ornamented textiles. The images
are executed according to recognizable conventions of Renaissance art,
specifically portraiture and costume book illustration. Given the lack of
images of these women within the sixteenth-century Ottoman context,
their total inaccessibility to outsiders, and the fact that the majority of the
artists responsible for these images never traveled to Istanbul, this genre
must be understood as wholly Western European and largely fabricated.
Printed portraits of Roxelana from the 1530s and 1540s mark the
emergence of this group. Woodcut portraits by the Nuremberg artist
Sebald Beham (ca.1530) and an anonymous Venetian work published by
Matteo Pagani (dated to 1540-1550) are representative (see figs. 3 and
4). Both images were accompanied by a pendant portrait of Süleyman.
The print medium would have allowed these images to be disseminated
widely, and the use of woodcut, as opposed to engraving or etching, sug
gests a more popular audience. Beham's image served as a model for sev
eral later portraits of Roxelana, including a nearly identical woodcut by
Erhard Schoen (ca. 1532), a full-length image by Michael Ostendorfer
(1548), and a painted portrait in the influential portrait series commis
sioned by the Italian historian Paolo Giovio. The range of copies indicates
the wide dissemination of this image and its importance in establishing a
visual representation of Roxelana.47 A somewhat well-known mid-century
Nuremberg artist is upon first glance a surprising place to locate the begin
ning of a visual tradition of Ottoman sultanas. In the wake of the 1529
siege of Vienna, however, Nuremberg publishers produced a large quantity
of printed material related to the Ottomans. Both Beham and Schoen were
extensively involved in image production for this material.48

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Fig. 3. Sebald Beham, Portrait of the Wife of Sultan Sü

Universitätsbibliothek Erlangen-Nürnberg.
The portraits by Beham and Pagani differ in so

details, in the depiction of Roxelana's features, and in d
Her youth and beauty is stressed particularly in Pagani
is shown with full lips, arched eyebrows, and delicate b
image's inscription, describing her as the most beau
women, further underscores her beauty. Yet the image
ous similarities. Dress is clearly a primary source of inte
as her elaborate costume, in particular her large headdr

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JLapiu hclla epiu fjaoritadonn^

^ gran Turtle diteh Rofsa
ylnVenefk per Mafh»o Pagan in frcl

Jjzana doi per infegna \x Rdv.zw- '
Fig. 4. Anon., published by Matteo Pagani, Portrait of Roxelana, 1540—50,

© Trustees of the British Museum.

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14 BMW] 2011, vol. 6 Heather Madar
portraits. As is true of the sultana images generally, h

imaginary, although it has some connections to actu
dress from this period.
Records for Ottoman women's costume are not
period; however, a general sense can be gained thro
visual and material record. Ottoman women's dress
ers of garments worn one on top of another, typicall
that the individual layers were partially revealed. It in
garment made from a filmy material, typically with
trousers gathered at the ankle, and one or more over-
made of colorful patterned silks, velvets, or brocades.
shown as a tall pointed hat or as a pillbox hat with an a
the head. Veils draped over the headdress concealed
out of doors.49
In the Beham portrait, the cap in the center of the

the pillbox shape of hats worn by Ottoman women. T
terning of her garment is reminiscent of Turkish tex
is visible of the dress itself is more suggestive of Eur
Roxelana wears a richly patterned underdress and o
of the layers of clothing worn by Ottoman women
a veil is also rooted in accuracy.50 The repeated cresce
the dress of Pagani's figure may be intended to signif
cent was already recognized in Europe as a symbol of
intended meaning, it would be the only place in the s
religious identity is referenced. The crescent shape is
variant of the (internum motif found on contemporar
The headdresses are more fantastic, however, and sugg
inaccurate, attempts to denote Roxelana's status and
turban is likely an attempt to feminize Ottoman male
volutes and cords are presumably intended to sugg
jewels and decoration on both representations indicate
A second set of sultana portraits are the mid-centu
portraits stemming primarily from Titian, who wa
portrayals of the European elite. Vasari reported th
portrait of Süleyman and portraits of Roxelana and

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cally noting the beauty of their clothing and hairstyles.53 Although Titian's
originals are presumed lost, a number of copies dating to the 1550s exist.
The various copies bear strong similarities, allowing a clear sense of the
original images to emerge. The portrait of Roxelana called the Sultana
Rossa and the portrait of Cameria as St. Catherine are representative of
this type (see figs. 5 and 6). Both are variously attributed to Titian or his
followers.54 Although the portrait of Cameria shows her with Catherines
spiked wheel, scholars agree that the image was not originally intended to
represent St. Catherine, and this detail is not present in other portraits of
Mihrimah from this group.55 Titian never visited Istanbul, and his images
are certainly fictitious.56 Based on the number of surviving copies and
variants, his images of Roxelana and, in particular, of Mihrimah clearly
enjoyed widespread popularity, and played an important role in shaping
the European image of elite Ottoman women.
The Titian workshop sultana portraits feature richly dressed, stately
women who gaze calmly out at the viewer. Although Venetian reports
tended not to stress Roxelanas physical beauty,57 the women's idealized
faces correspond to contemporary ideals of beauty, with pale white skin,
rosy cheeks, full red lips, and thin, arched eyebrows. Vasari's brief com
ment underlines the central interest held by dress in these images. The
costume shown appears more accurate than in the earlier woodcuts yet
is still largely a construction by the artist. The women wear tall, pointed
cloth headdresses with long attached veils. These suggest shapes found in
Ottoman women's headdresses, while the elaborate jewel at the front of
Mihrimah's headdress is perhaps an aigrette, a type of ornament worn by
women of the harem that could be put on headgear. Both images indicate
the presence of layered clothing, the Sultana Rossa showing more clearly an
underdress and a heavier, more decorative overdress. The pink flower on
her chest, presumably a rose, is surely intended as a play on her name. The
small animal perched on her arm, a marten, suggests her status.
Yet the facial features and dress are not only similar to one another,
but also to two similarly dated portraits from Titian's workshop: the
Washington Portrait of a Lady (1555) and Girl with a Crown of Roses (mid
sixteenth century) (see fig. 7).58 The figures are all placed in a % length
pose with hands near the waist, holding some kind of object. Roxelana's

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B|
Fig. 5. Studio of Titian, La Sultana Rossa, 1550s, Bequest of John

Ringling, 1936, Collection of the John and Mable Ringling Museum of
Art, the State Art Museum of Florida.

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im
.¥
m-r^
fc£j
♦A
Fig. 6. Titian, Cameria, Daughter of Suleiman the Magnificent as St.

Catherine, ca. 1555, © The Samuel Courtauld Trust, The Courtauld
Gallery.

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■&W
rN?
•ilMiiiif"'
Fig. 7. Titian, Portrait of a Lady, 1555. Samuel Kress Collection, Image

Courtesy of the National Gallery of Art, Washington.

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garb, which initially appears to be a plausible European interpretation

of Ottoman dress, is in fact extremely similar to the clothing worn by
European women. Roxelana has a pearl necklace and jeweled bracelet simi
lar to those worn by the Girl with a Crown of Roses, and both women wear
an outer robe fastened with horizontal clasps. Roxelana and the Lady both
wear a dark green and bronze robe with an elaborately jeweled border and
triangular points on the sleeves over a low-cut white underdress with loose
sleeves. The three women also wear similar pearl drop earrings. The only
thing, in fact, which distinguishes Roxelana from the European women is
her headdress.
Although this portrait tradition appears to be a phenomenon of the
mid-sixteenth century focusing on Roxelana and Mihrimah, Nur Banu was
also featured in a similar image, today in a private collection in Istanbul.
Nur Banu was the favorite of Selim II, a son of Süleyman and Roxelana,
and the mother of Sultan Murad III, which put her in the powerful posi
tion of valide sultan. The portrait of Nur Banu by an unknown artist is
stylistically similar to the Venetian group. She is shown in a three-quarter
pose with a tall white headdress adorned with a jeweled ornament and
long, trailing veils. She wears a costume of rich, brightly colored textiles
with several visible layers, and her features again correspond to contempo
rary European notions of female beauty.
A portrait of Roxelana also appears in Lorichs Wolgerissene und
Geschnittene Figuren alongside six other images of women labeled "Soltane"
all shown half-length and placed behind a parapet (see fig. 8). Roxelana,
identified as Ruziae Soldane, holds a flower, presumably a rose. Her pill
box-shaped headdress, adorned with pearls and other jewels, corresponds
to a shape seen in Ottoman women's headgear, yet her dress, with its tight
bodice and full sleeves, looks more European. Uncharacteristically, she also
appears older, with her face showing deep nasolabial folds. It is tempting to
read negativity into her stern and rather drawn countenance and the over
all dark tonality of the image. Yet all of the sultanas are shown similarly,
and indeed many of the images in Lorichs series feature high contrast and
strong dark tones, suggesting that these visual characteristics should not
be read as a commentary on her person.59 Since Lorich's images were not

176.234.10.121 on Wed, 01 Sep 2021 16:46:01 UTC
r
U/f,
Fig. 8. Melchior Lorich, Ruziae Soldane, from Wolgerissene und

Geschnittene Figuren, published 1626. © Trustees of the British Museum.

176.234.10.121 on Wed, 01 Sep 2021 16:46:01 UTC
published until the seventeenth century, they had no immediate effect on

the sultana genre.
The later sixteenth century saw a proliferation of costume books,
many featuring images of Turkish costume.60 A number included images
of sultanas, often identified by name. An image of a youthful Camilla
appears in Boissard's 1581 Habitus Variarum Orbis Gentium [Costume of
the Various Peoples of the World] and also in Jost Amman's 1586 Gynaeceum
siVe Theatrum Mulierum [Theater of Women], although Mihrimah died
in 1578 (see fig. 9). She is described in both as the daughter of Sultan
Siileyman. The image in Amman also focuses on her person, albeit in a
generic way. The accompanying text identifies her as Camilla, the Turkish
sultans daughter, and notes that her manner is arrogant and cruel. Her
clothing is described as beautiful and adorned with jewels, pearls, and
gold.61 Although a description of dress is to be expected in a costume book,
the stress on its ornateness and beauty matches the interest in dress seen
in the sultana portraits, while the mention of cruelty invokes the contem
porary stereotype of the cruel Turks.
In other instances, costume book images of the sultana or sul
tans favorite are less clearly depictions of specific individuals. Nicolay's
Nauigations into Turkie, for example, includes an image of "The great
ladie and wife unto the great Turk."62 Vecellio's 1590 De gli Habiti Antichi
et Moderni [Of Ancient and Modern Dress] depicts the Favorita del Turco
followed by text (largely taken from Nicolay) that mentions her clothing
and beauty and provides a detailed discussion of the harem (fig. 10). The
intended identification of the women in both images is unclear. Roxelana,
who died in 1558, predated both images, and Siileymans reign ended
in 1566. Nicolay's image is nevertheless likely a posthumous image of
Roxelana because she would have been alive during his 1549 trip, although
Nur Banu was the favorite by 1567.63 Vecellio's Favorita could be Safiye, the
favorite of Murad III, sultan until 1594. Yet the image is visually very simi
lar to the Titian-circle portraits of Roxelana and Mihrimah. As a relative of
Titian and member of his studio, Vecellio presumably knew these images
directly and in all likelihood was also aware of their identity. Thompson
nevertheless suggests that this image was intended to show the "splendor
of dress characteristic of Ottoman women closest to the sultan" rather than

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Fig. 10. Cesare Vecellio, The Favorite of the Turkish Sultan, from De
gli hahiti antichi et moderni di diversi parti del mondo, 1590, © The
Metropolitan Museum of Art/Art Resource, NY.

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representing any specific woman.64 While the generic

ably be taken at face value, the clear similarity to previo
that Roxelana and Mihrimah provided the visual tem
conceptions of the sultan's favorite or an Ottoman p
their (fictitious) images persisted well after they them
There is a clear visual relationship between the vari
images and the sultana portraits. Similarities are pa
in their depiction of dress. The tall headdress with vei
Roxelana, for example, has strong similarities to the h
the Titian-circle portraits, Boissard's Camilla, and Vece
Vecellio and Boissard costumes are nearly identical, and
ing from the tip of the headdress and pulled up under
responds to the veiling on the Titian-circle Cameria po
time, Cameria's patterned, long-sleeved, v-neck dress w
the length of the bodice has parallels to the costum
Turkish Gentlewoman.65 Yet the images as a group do n
consensus on the dress worn by elite Ottoman wom
Ladie, for example, wears a fantastic veiled crown and
sash, while Amman's Camilla lacks any type of headdre
The accuracy, or lack thereof, in the depiction of dr
issue in these images. While dress may seem a specialize
a window onto the larger issue of authenticity centr
European depictions of Ottoman women. Of all the arti
images of sultanas, only Lorich and Nicolay visited t
Yet it is very unlikely that they would have been able
Ottoman women, particularly women within the sultan
have had the opportunity to sketch them. Ottoman wo
women of the sultan's harem in particular, were kept i
apart from their husbands and close family members,
see them with their faces uncovered. This simple fact c
ity of virtually all early modern depictions of Ottoman
tion. Despite claims by some artists to have found inve
Ottoman women, most European artists, even those
Ottoman Empire, likely created images of Ottoman
mix of fabrication and improvisation based on individu

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and perhaps verbal descriptions.67 Nicolay, for example, claimed in his text
that he hired a prostitute to model local fashions, which were acquired
for him at the bazaar.68 European images of elite Ottoman women must
therefore be understood as a blend of fantasy and received information of
perhaps questionable provenance rather than observational accuracy.
Despite their lack of authenticity, the emergence of these images as
a type testifies to a new interest in these women on the part of European
viewers, which is presumably related to a more general increase in Ottoman
imagery in Europe during the mid-sixteenth century. This was largely in
response to the ongoing Ottoman advance into central Europe under
Süleyman.69 Siileyman, recognized as a powerful military force and as a
major threat to Europe, himself became a figure of great interest. Images
of his wife and daughter are surely connected to a growing appetite for
information about the sultan.
The increasing demand for portraits of famous men and women in
both painted and printed form during the sixteenth century also helps
explain the rise of the sultana portrait type. These images were often col
lected and displayed in portrait galleries, such as the collection of over
400 portraits of notable individuals owned by the historian Paolo Giovio,
and also circulated as printed series. Numerous portraits of the Ottoman
sultans were executed in the sixteenth century by European artists for
European audiences, many intended for inclusion in such galleries.70
Portraits of sultanas were also placed in these galleries: Mihrimah and
Roxelana were included in Cristofano dellAltissimo's series of famous
individuals for the Medici copied from the Giovio series,71 and Mihrimah
appeared in a printed series of nineteen ruler portraits by Pieter van der
Heyden (1556).72 Lorich was commissioned to do a similar set of portraits
by Duke Hans the Elder, a Danish noble, for his palace in Hadersleu. The
initial commission for portraits of Charles V, Ferdinand, and Siileyman,
plus portraits of their consorts was never completed, but Fischer suggests
they were intended for a portrait gallery.73 The Venetian sultana portraits
should also be connected to the particular interest in Venice for Ottoman
imagery. According to Wilson, "portraits of foreigners ... were common
place in sixteenth-century Venetian houses," and "by the middle of the

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[sixteenth] century, images identified as Turks ... were

on the walls of Venetian houses."74
Roxelana herself must also be seen as a key factor in
of sultana imagery because she was the first Ottoman w
known in Western Europe. Roxelana likely entered
around 1520. Within several years, the sultan had re
as his sexual partner, freed her from slavery, and mar
remain his consort until her death, giving birth to
relationship with the sultan was unusual and broke
Ottoman customs.76 The unconventional nature of t
Roxelana's status as a trusted confidante of the sultan w
and much commented on by both Ottomans and Eu
ambassadors, in particular, made note of her status,
number of their reports.77
Yet Roxelana became a figure of ill-repute to Western
influence over the sultan was seen as the result of both
magic. The Ottoman public saw her as a witch, an op
various European writers including Busbecq, who com
of her use of magical potions to ensure the sultans l
who noted Siileyman's reputed great love for Roxelana,
"all his subjects marvel and say that she has bewitched
her [a] witch."80 A number of reports describe her use
and cleverness to manipulate the sultan. The Venetian
Bragadino described how she was able to have a new con
after she wept and demonstrated her extreme unhap
Navagero, another ambassador, similarly related how sh
in the harem to win Siileyman's affections through man
The principal cause of Roxelana's notoriety, however
involvement in the murder of Mustafa, Siileyman's son
Giilbahar (or Mahidevran). Mustafa was regarded as the
his father until his execution in 1553 by order of Siileym
believed that his execution occurred as a result of a plo
Mihrimah, and Rüstern Pasha, Mihrimah's husban
Grand Vizier from 1544-1553 and 1555-1561.84 The
ing Mustafa's execution were reported in a number o

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Busbecq described Mustafa's execution in some detail and discussed the

alleged plot.85 A political pamphlet by Nicolas de Moffan, "A Cruell Facte
of Soltan Solyman," published in 1555, was translated into multiple lan
guages and circulated widely.86 The pamphlet helped to popularize the
story of Mustafa's execution and Roxelana's involvement, solidifying her
reputation in the West. Roxelana, who is described variously as "crafty" and
as a "wicked" and "devilish" woman, is said to have "corrupt [ed] the Kyng's
mynde" and "used certayne Sorceries ... to wyn the love of the King."87 The
text describes how she attempted to kill Mustafa herself by sending him a
poisoned set of armor and, when that failed, convinced Süleyman to have
him killed. The conspiracy and execution even became the subject of sev
eral dramas, such as Gabriel Bounin's La Soltane, performed around 1560
and published in 1561.88
Roxelana was the first Ottoman woman to truly penetrate European
consciousness, and she appeared as an almost wholly negative figure. Given
this level of awareness, particularly when combined with the contempo
rary interest in the Ottomans and images of famous individuals, it is not
surprising to find her depicted in European art. Despite her bad press in
written sources, visual depictions nevertheless present a largely neutral
image. An interesting exception may be found in two images from the late
sixteenth and early seventeenth century, which are clearly related to the
earlier sixteenth-century visual tradition. Richard Knolles's The Generali
Historie of the Turkes until this present Yeare 1603 includes a printed por
trait of Roxelana. The image, which is derived from Theodore de Bry's
portrait of Roxelana, an illustration found in Jacques Boissard's 1596 Vitae
et icons Sultanorum Turcicorum [Lives and Portraits of the Turkish Sultans]
has clear similarities to Pagani's portrait of Roxelana (see fig. 11). Both
portraits are accompanied by a verse, which stresses the gap between her
appearance and character. The inscription in Knolles also makes a clear
reference to the Mustapha story:
To fairest lookes truth not too farre, nor yet to beautie braue: For
hateful thoughts so finely maskt, their deadly poisons haue. Loues
charmed cups, the subtile dame doth to her husband fill: And causeth
him with cruell hand, his childrens bloud to spill.89

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» !» ■—
FORMA TBBIIAVDADA QVTI3EM MORESQFOLITr

BARBARA .SEP CRVDVM PECTORA VIKV5 HAKET);
Fig. 11. Theodore de Bry, Portrait of Roxelana from Vitae et icons

Sultanorum Turcicorum, 1596, © Trustees of the British Museum.

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While none of the earlier images were accompanied by a similar text, the
Knolles verse underlines the primary cause of Roxelanas European notori
ety and suggests that her image may well have been understood as similarly
disjunctive in other contexts.
There is one instance in the sultana portrait tradition where the depic
tion of Roxelana has clear political overtones, notably the Beham portrait
(fig. 3). Yet the political dimension relates to European politics rather than
to the persona of Roxelana or to intrigues at the Ottoman court. Roxelanas
portrait is here paired with a portrait of Siileyman, and both flank a central
portrait of Francois I. Labeled "Rex Francie" and marked with a coat of
arms with fleur de lis, Francois faces Siileyman. He had made overtures to
Siileyman as early as 1525 and signed an alliance with him in 1536. This
move was, unsurprisingly, controversial within Europe. The image, created
in Germany in the wake of the Siege of Vienna, was certainly intended
as propaganda linking the Ottoman foe to the French king, traditional
enemy of the Habsburgs. Roxelana thus features here as an accessory to
contemporary geo-political maneuverings. As one of the earliest images of
this type, it furthermore underscores that the impetus for her appearance
in the European visual record was as an accessory to her husband.
Mihrimah's frequent appearance within the sultana genre is surely
related to interest in her parents and also to a growing awareness of the
significance of what Peirce terms the "princess-statesman marital alli
ance."90 Mihrimah was married to Rüstern Pasha in 1539. This made her a
strategic figure and of interest to European ambassadors.91 Contemporary
sources also indicate that she wielded political power and influence and
became her father's confidant after her mothers death. Inscriptions on
portraits of Mihrimah naming her as both the daughter of Süleyman and
the wife of Rüstern Pasha confirm European awareness of her marriage
and indicate that this was seen as significant.92 Goughe also notes this con
nection. In his list of Süleyman's children by Roxelana, he states that "the
virgine was married to one Rustanus a paschan" who "obtained the dignitye
of a Visier, whiche we may call one of the chiefe councellers."93 The reputed
role of both Rüstern Pasha and Mihrimah in the execution of her brother
Mustapha presumably also added to her interest, although she did not
share her mother s notoriety.

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Nur Banu, whose portrait also appears within th

similarly a figure of some interest to Western audiences
reputed to have been born a Venetian patrician. Accor
rary reports, Nur Banu, born Cecelia Venier-Baffo, w
daughter of Nicolö Venier and Violante Baffo. Captur
entered the harem, eventually becoming the favorite of s
son and successor of Siileyman. She also had considerable
valide sultan during the reign of Murad III. While the le
genealogy has recently been questioned, it was believed b
Venetians, endorsed by the Senate, and promulgated by
who described herself as the daughter of an unspecified
family with a palace on the Grand Canal.94 Nur Banu
and exchanged gifts with the Venetian senate.95 Wester
moreover, show a clear awareness of the significance of t
the later sixteenth century as well as her potential role i
The repeated depiction and clear interest in thes
women belies the usual understanding of the Western pe
women as lacking in identity or individuality. Roxelana
undoubtedly figures of interest to sixteenth-century Eu
distinct, named individuals in the collective awareness. In
far more in the early modern European record (both
than they do in Ottoman sources. Yet their images are r
of personality despite the lurid depictions of Roxelan
texts.97 Indeed, these images provide little information
themselves, who appear primarily as beautiful, even inte
nequins modeling exotic dress. The contextualizing in
given through inscriptions and supporting text is furth
a description of their beauty, their expensive dress, and
to masculine power, whether as wife, favorite, or daught
women are given distinct identities in the sense that th
labeled, their characterizations are both minimal and rep
The sultana images are part of a much larger set of s
representations, which presented the Ottoman Empire, i
inhabitants to Western viewers. Dress, then as now, was
and define. Speaking of Renaissance costume books,

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dress served as a "locus of alterity ... making foreigners appear strange."98

The exotic dress worn by these women marks them visually as Other, and
the repeated association of their dress with their identity in turn made this
dress into a marker of Ottoman identity. Yet while costume denotes dif
ference here, it is clearly also a primary source of visual interest and even
desire.99 These images, moreover, do not frame these women as an absolute
Other. While their dress categorizes them as non-European, it also catego
rizes them as women of status. The image compositions, identical in the
painted portraits to portrait conventions used for European sitters, further
serve to lessen their distance and strangeness. Indeed, as seen clearly in
the Titian examples, with only minor alterations these very same women
become European. Their status as famous, noble, beautiful, and powerful
overrides — to a degree — their otherness.
The sultana portraits showcase famous women within the sultans
harem, yet are clearly distinct from later harem imagery, both visually and
conceptually. The Lorich drawings and the harem scenes from the Historia
Turcorum, by contrast, are isolated anticipations of a much later genre, a
genre that would be developed only at the turn of the eighteenth century,
when artists like Jean-Baptiste Vanmour created the first detailed images
of life within the sultan's harem.100 There are several likely reasons why only
a few isolated examples of Renaissance harem imagery exist, despite ample
textual promptings, and why the widespread production and populariza
tion of harem imagery was delayed.
On the one hand, apart from printed imagery, which tended to have
a wider range of permissible subject matter, there was not really a category
of secular painting in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries in which harem
scenes could appear. Painted reclining nudes and other erotic images were
generally confined to scenes from classical mythology. Nude bathhouse
scenes do appear in printed imagery in Dürers Women's Bath (1496), for
example, suggesting that a Turkish bath scene could have been possible.
Yet while Ottoman-themed scenes are plentiful in mid-sixteenth-century
print culture, printed genre scenes showing Ottoman women in the bath or
the harem simply do not appear. In the early eighteenth century, with the
emergence of the Rococo and the fashion for turquerie, harem scenes had a
more obvious genre niche.

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Indeed, harem discourse itself is seen as a dominan

motif only from the late seventeenth century on. The
ideological shift have been widely posited. The year 1
ond siege of Vienna, widely understood as a watershed
Ottoman relationship to Western Europe. One result of th
of the balance of power that followed was a shift in the E
of the Ottomans from formidable foe to weakened and de
is precisely at this period that harem imagery comes into
Numerous other factors are also seen to play a part in
nance of the harem fantasy in this period. These include d
political philosophy, colonialism, changes in gender roles,
sexual morality and monogamy, high profile Ottoman visi
in the early eighteenth century, a new vogue for all things
translation and subsequent popularization of the Arabia
early eighteenth century.102 Harem discourse was buttres
events and ideologies.
The conceptual structures that encouraged later ha
were not yet in place in the fifteenth and sixteenth centur
competing ideological frameworks and historical realities m
fantasy an inadequate model for this period. The Rena
embrace the harem as its overarching representational
Ottoman Empire because harem imagery was ill-suited to t
"invincible Turk," the "terror of the world."103 Sultana imag
spurred by the emergence of several prominent women w
found an obvious niche within the broader sixteenth-centu
the Ottomans and the focus on individual sultans, which a
related to the specific dynamics of the sixteenth-century
relationship. The appearance of Roxelana and Mihrima
record of the sixteenth century, while limited, marks a dis
interest in individual, identified Ottoman women. Their im
type of Renaissance Ottoman-themed imagery and refle
instance of European imaginings of the Muslim woman
more serve as a useful reminder that Western myths of "
neither monolithic nor unchanging.

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Notes
1. "Orientalist" is used here both in the sense of art, literature, or other cultural
productions that took as their subject matter the peoples, cultures, or settings of the Near
and Middle East and in reference to Edward Said's monumentally influential Orientalism
(New York: Random House, 1978). While the present study will not engage directly with
Said, any contemporary study of Western constructions of the Muslim world implicitly, if
not explicitly, engages with his formulations.
2. In art, the nineteenth-century works of Ingres and Geróme are the most well
known examples of harem imagery. There is a large bibliography on nineteenth-century
Orientalist art. See, for example, John MacKenzie, Orientalism and the Arts (Manchester:
Manchester University Press, 1995); Nicholas Tromans, The Lure of the East: British
Orientalist Painting (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008); and Linda Nochlin,"The
Imaginary Orient," in The Politics of Vision: Essays on Nineteenth Century Art and Society
(New York: Harper and Row, 1989). In written texts, the harem features in works rang
ing from Racine's Bajazet, to Montesquieu's Lettres Persanes, to the Letters of Lady Mary
Wortley Montagu. See Ruth Yeazell, Harems of the Mind: Passages of Western Art and
Literature (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000).
3. The term "sultana" is found in sixteenth-century European sources, for example,
in Luigi Bassano's discussion of Siileyman's wife in I Costumi et I Modi Particolari de la
Vita de Turchi (1545). The term "sultan" (originally from Arabic) was given not only to the
Ottoman ruler, but also to his children, with princesses having the title placed after their
name, such as Siileyman's daughter, Mihrimah Sultan. The sultan's mother also bore the
sultan title, as did the sultan's favorite concubine, e.g., Hurrem Sultan. See Leslie Peirce,
The Imperial Harem: Women and Sovereignty in the Ottoman Empire (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1993), 18. On the terms haseki and valide sultan, see Peirce, 58 and 91.
4. See Jacqueline de Weever, Sheha's Daughters: Whitening and Demonizing the
Saracen Woman in Medieval French Epic (New York: Garland, 1998); Juliann Vitullo,
"Masculinity, Sexuality, and Orientalism in the Medieval Italian Epic," in The Chivalric
Epic in Medieval Italy (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2000), 74-90; and Mohja
Kahf, Western Representations of the Muslim Woman: From Termagant to Odalisque
(Austin: University of Texas Press, 1999). While visual representations of Muslim
women in the Middle Ages are not numerous, John Williams sees a depiction of Hagar
as intimating lascivious sexuality; see "Generationes Abrahae: Reconquest Iconography in
Leon," Gesta 16, no. 2 (1977): 3-14.
5. Silke Falkner discusses Western imaginings of sexual deviance in the Ottoman
Empire, in'"Having it Off' with Fish, Camels, and Lads: Sodomitic Pleasures in German
Language Turcica," Journal of the History of Sexuality 13:4 (2004): 401-27.
6. Yeazell notes that "strictly speaking, in fact, there is no such place as'the' harem."
The term is from Arabic, meaning forbidden or sacred. "Seraglio" is from the word for
palace (saray). A mistaken linking with the Italian word to lock up (serrare) produced the
notion of the seraglio as the sultans harem; see Yeazell, Harems of the Mind, 1-2.

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7. European harem imagery has been analyzed by numerous sc

Yeazell, Harems of the Mind; Alain Grosrichard, The Sultan's Court: E
the East, trans. Liz Heron (London: Verso, 1998); Joan DelPlato, Multi
Pleasures: Representing the Harem, 1800-1875 (Cranbury: Farleigh Dic
Press, 2002); and Kahf, Western Representations. For a discussion of
ception of the harem, see Bernadette Andrea, Women and Islam in Ea
Literature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007). Michae
Encounters: Representing the Orient in 17ih-Century French Travel Lite
Rodopoi, 2008) includes a discussion of seventeenth-century reports o
8. Yeazell's time frame for the dominance of harem discourse is b
of the Ottomans at Vienna in 1683 and the establishment of the T
1923; see Harems of the Mind, 3. Other writers largely concur.
9. Kahf, Western Representations, 98.
10. Numerous European women, however, visited harems by
century. See Billie Melman, Women's Orients: English Women and th
1918: Sexuality, Religion, and Work (Ann Arbor: University of Michi
11. Grosrichard, Sultan's Court, 125.
12. It is important to note the depth of error in Western percept
The view of the harem as a libidinous zone focused around male se
the part of the house reserved for women and for children is a funda
misconception. See Peirce, The Imperial Harem, particularly the intro
13. Ibid., 3.
14. Nina Berman notes that "translations, often word for wor
and document the high degree to which Europeans shared this tex
linguistic boundaries"; see German Literature on the Middle East: Disco
1000-1989 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 2011), 78. Asli Qr
Terror of the World" to the "Sick Man of Europe": European Images of O
Society from the Sixteenth Century to the Nineteenth (New York: Pe
provides a useful overview of this genre.
15. Berman, German Literature, 79.
16. Thomas Dallam, Dallam's Travels, in Early Voyages and Trav
ed. Theodore Dent (London: Hakluyt Society, 1893), 74.
17. The text was first published in 1567; the quotation is take
English translation, Nicolas de Nicolay, The Nauigations into Turk
Capo Press, 1968), 53.
18. Because of laws forbidding the enslavement of Muslims, wom
harem were non-Muslim, although many did convert to Islam. Schick
"It is not that this fiction was 'inaccurate' and happened to represent
rather, it pointedly represented the women occupying the Turkish sp
see Peirce, Imperial Harem, 200.

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19. Hugh Goughe, The Ofspring of the House of Ottomanno (London, 1569), 73.
Goughe's work is largely an English translation of Bartolomej Georgijevic's 1560 De
Origine Imperii Turcorum. Georgijevic had escaped from Ottoman captivity.
20. Text from the 1592 English translation, Historie of the Damnable Life and
Death of Doctor John Faustas, in The English Faust-book of 1592, ed. H. Logeman (Gand:
Université de Gand, 1900), 69.
21. Ibid, 70.
22. Theodore Spandounes, On the Origin of the Ottoman Emperors (1538), trans.
Donald M. Nicol (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 129.
23. " [S]i lauano domésticamente l'un l'altra, e una vicina con l'altra, o una sorella
con l'altra: Onde si fa che tra donne é amore grandissimo, per la familiaritá del lauarsi,
e strappiccarsi," from I Costumi et I Modi Particolari de la Vita de Turchi (Munich: Pera
Druck, 1967), 17; translation from Irvin Cemil Schick, The Erotic Margin: Sexuality and
Spatiality in Alterist Discourse (London: Verso, 1999), 212.
24. Nicolay, Nauigations, 60.
25. Dallam, Travels, 74-75.
26. Ogier Ghiselin de Busbecq, The Turkish Letters, trans. Edward Seymour
Forster (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2005), 117-18.
27. The source of this information is Gian-Maria Angiolello, a Venetian at
Mehmed's court. Patricia Fortini Brown suggests that these images were not necessarily
erotica but may have been banquet or festival scenes; see Venetian Narrative Painting in the
Age of Carpaccio (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988), 55. Alan Chong notes that
lussuria could also mean opulence or abundance, in "Gentile Bellini in Istanbul," Bellini
and the East, ed. Caroline Campbell and Alan Chong (London: National Gallery, 2005),
110. See also Franz Babinger, Mehmed the Conqueror and his Time, ed. William Hickman
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978), 378—79.
28. A single drawing of a seated Turkish woman (ca. 1480) is attributed to Bellini,
yet neither he nor subsequent artists made use of this figure. See Campell and Chong,
Bellini, particularly 99-105.
29. Ulrike Bauer-Eberhardt attributes the images to Francesco da Castello, a
Lombard artist who worked at the Buda court, in "Unknown Renaissance Miniatures
from Lombardy and the Veneto in Bavarian Collections," Arte Christiana 84, no. 772
(1996): 10-29. The images have also been attributed to Nicolao Sagundino, by Julian
Raby, in The Sultan's Portrait: Picturing the House of Osman (Istanbul: Isbank, 2000), 79.
30. Raby mentions this manuscript briefly; ibid., 79,93. Bauer-Eberhard discusses
the manuscript, but focuses largely on attribution issues.
31. Raby, Sultan's Portrait, 79; Bauer-Eberhard, "Renaissance Miniatures," 21.
32. The linking of male sexuality and war is also found in early modern European
imagery, for example, in the work of Swiss artist Urs Graf.
33. On Lorich, see Erik Fischer, Melchior Lorck, 4 vols. (Copenhagen: Vankunsten
Publishers, 2009).

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34. The drawings, held at the Schleswig-Holsteinisches Lan

Gottorf, are reproduced in Erik Fischer, Melchior Lorch: Draw
Collection at Stonor Park England (Copenhagen: Statens Museum
and also in the forthcoming vol. 5 of Fischer, Melchior Lorck.
35. Dror Ze'evi, Producing Desire: Changing Sexual Discourse in
East (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006), 147.
36. One example is the figure of a dancer, labeled Tschin
Vanmour's engravings for De Ferriol's Recueil de Cent Estampes [Co
Prints] from 1714. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu mentions female
eral descriptions of meals with elite Ottoman women in her famou
and Works of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (London: George Be
37. See Arzu Oztiirkmen, "Modern Dance 'Alia Turca': Tra
Dance in Early Republican Turkey," Dance Research Journal 35,
Metin And, A Pictorial History of Turkish Dancing (Ankara: Dost
38. Guillaume Postel, who traveled to Istanbul as part of the
during the 1530s, described female entertainers in his De la Repuh
1560), 18-19. He noted in particular the presence of a harp, sin
ments of the women, and a mimed performance of love.
39. See Fischer, Melchior Lorck, vol. 2, 261. "Eine dess Sultans
unnd Harpfifen Spielerin" [One of the sultan's captured Christian
40. Ibid., vol. 1, 98.
41. Walter Denny,"Orientalism in European Art," The Musli
(1983): 271.
42. Ibid,, 266.
43. Although there are no direct prototypes for these images, there are several
notable images of Muslim women from the late fifteenth century. The Saracen woman
by Erhard Reuwich from Bernhard von Breydenbach's Peregrinatio in Terram Sanctum
(1488) was widely copied in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. The Venetian
artist Carpaccio made repeated use of this figure, as did Gentile Bellini. Carpaccio also
included a group of women dressed in Mamluk dress in his Sermon of St. Stephen. See
Stefano Carboni, Venice and the Islamic World: 826-1797 (New Haven: Yale University
Press, 2007), 306.
44. I am choosing to refer to Hurrem as Roxelana and Mihrimah as Mihrimah,
despite the perhaps awkward mixing of European and Turkish names, because I am focus
ing here on the Renaissance European image of Roxelana rather than the historical person
known as Hurrem. Roxelana was extensively discussed in sixteenth-century European
sources, and she became an almost legendary figure in later material. The Cameria/
Camilla name for Mihrimah does not have the same resonance as Roxelana, nor is there
a comparable Western image of Cameria/Camilla that developed separate from the his
torical person Mihrimah. The figure of Cameria is also not one that would continue to
fascinate Western Europeans in later centuries in the way that Roxelana did. On the later

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image of Roxelana, see Galiana Yermolenko, ed. Roxolana in European Literature, History,
and Culture (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2010).
45. The neglect of these representations presumably results from their emerging
out of several disparate visual traditions, their crossing of North/South divisions, their
execution in many cases by less well-known artists, or their provenance only in print.
Individual studies exist in some cases, but there has been no holistic exploration of these
images as a group.
46. Nicolays image of The Great Ladie and Wife Unto the Great Turk precedes his
chapter on "The great Sarail," while Vecellio's Favorita del Turco precedes a discussion of
how women are chosen for the harem, the clothing of harem women, and harem admin
istration. See Cesare Vecellio, Habiti Antichi et Moderni, translated in Margaret Rosenthal
and Ann Rosalind Jones, The Clothing of the Renaissance World (London: Thames and
Hudson, 2008), 392-93.
47. Giovio was particularly concerned with accuracy and sought prototype images.
The re-use of Behams image of Roxelana indicates that it was seen as an authoritative
image. See Julian Raby, The Sultan's Portrait, for more on the Giovio series.
48. See Keith Moxey, Peasants, Warriors, and Wives: Popular Imagery in the
Reformation (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989), 67-100.
49. See Jennifer Scarce, Women's Costume of the Near and Middle East (London:
Unwin Hyman, 1987), particularly ch. 4. There is a brief discussion of Ottoman women's
costume and an extensive discussion of Ottoman textiles in the time of Süleyman in Esin
Atil, The Age of Sultan Süleyman the Magnificent (Washington DC: National Gallery of
Art, 1987), 177-233.
50. Although they see the Pagani portrait of Roxelana as apocryphal, J. M. Rogers
and R. M. Ward note that the headdress worn in this portrait has parallels to head
dresses worn by some peri figures in Ottoman and Safavid manuscript painting. See their
Suleyman the Magnificent (Secaucus: Wellfleet, 1988), 51.
51. The fintemani motif usually appears as three circles arranged in a triangle. The
circles can have a smaller, different-colored circle placed at the edge, forming a crescent
shape, however. While the crescents here are not placed in groups of three, and do not
form the distinctive triangular pattern, the shape of the individual motifs is somewhat
similar.
52. Dürer, Behams teacher, also (inaccurately) placed a turban on an Ottoman

woman in his Turkish Family (1496).
53. Giorgio Vasari, Lives of the Artists, trans. Julia Conaway Bondanella and Peter
Bondanella (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), 506.
54. Related paintings include a portrait of Roxelana in a private collection
in Istanbul and portraits of Mihrimah in the Mazovian Museum, the Staatsgalerie
Achaffenburg, and in Bergamo. A similar image in Montpellier is attributed by the
museum to Sofonisba Anguissola. See Janina Ruszczycówna, "O Niektórych Portretach
Sulejmana II I Jego Rodziny," in Ars Auro Prior: Studia Ioanni Bialostocki Sexagenario
Dicata (Warsaw: Panstwowe Wydawn Nauk, 1981), 279-85; and Johannes Wilde, St.

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Catherine," in Antoine Seilern, Italian Paintings and Drawings at 56

SW7 Addenda (London: Shenval Press, 1969), 4-6.
55. Harold Wethey sees the wheel as a copyists addition, in The P
vol. 2 (London: Phaidon, 1971), 191. Wilde describes the image as
only as a portrait of Cameria; see "St. Catherine," 4.
56. While it might be argued that Titian, as a Venetian, could
an authoritative tradition of imagery due to the frequent contact be
Ottoman world, as discussed below, even artists who traveled to Ista
authentic images of elite Ottoman women. A letter written by G
Philip II of Spain in 1559 states that he would send Philip a small pi
Turkish or Persian woman made from his imagination - "una Tur
sua fantasia" This description of the image indicates clearly that, at
imaginary nature of the depiction was clear to all involved. Wethey,
57. Galiana Yermolenko, "Roxolana: 'The Greatest Empresse
Muslim World 95, no. 2 (2005): 234. The ambassador Bragadino de
"giovane, ma non bella" (Yermolenko, 245).
58. Wethey, Paintings of Titans, 191.
59. Erik Fischer sees a tendency towards stylization and austerit
of Lorich's style, in "Melchior Lorck: A Dane as Imperial Draughtsm
in the 1550s," in The Arabian Journey: Danish Connections with the
Thousand Years (Árhus: Prehistoric Museum Moesgárd, 1996), 37.
60. See Bronwen Wilson, The World in Venice: Print, the City,
Identity (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2005), ch. 2.
61. At the head and the bottom of the page of the image are
"Camilla des Türckischen Sultans Tochter. Camilla von Türckische
hoffertig und grausam / Von Leib einer guten Gestalt / Und sons
/ Gekleidet auch gar hübsch und sein / In Golt/Perlen/Edelgestei
Pracht ihr gar nichts feit." [Camilla, the Turkish sultan's daughter. C
dynasty / Her nature is cruel and arrogant / Of body a good sh
adorned with variety / She is finely dressed / In gold / Pearls / Gems
ery she lacks nothing. ] Jean-Jacques Boissard, Habitus Variarum Orb
1581), Jost Amman, Gynaeceum sive Theatrum Mulierum (Frankfur
62. Nicholas, Navigations, p. 52. The illustrations were execute
although Nicolay states that he made the original sketches; Leslie Lue
the Invisible: European Images of Ottoman Women, 1567-1867," T
Newsletter 24, no. 1 (1993): 1-3, provides a brief discussion of the il
63. The designation of'wife" at this date also suggests Roxelana
Venetian ambassador Jacopo Ragazzoni, Nur Banu became the legal
states that this only took place six months prior to his 1571 report
Imperial Harem, 93.
64. Wendy Thompson, in Carboni, Venice and the Islamic Wor
65. Wethey, Paintings, 190.

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66. Nicolay's images are commonly seen as the primary source for sixteenth
century depictions of Ottoman costume; see Carboni, Venice and the Islamic World, 318.
It is clear that in the case of sultana images the visual sources were considerably more
complex.
67. The artist Reinhold Lubenau, in Turkey from 1587 to 1589, for example,
described how he secretly observed the wife of a well-to-do neighbor from a window and
was thereby able to describe her clothing; see Otto Kurz and Hilde Schueller Kurz,"The
Turkish Dress in the Costume-Book of Rubens," The Decorative Arts of Europe and the
Islamic East: Selected Studies (London: Dorian, 1977), 276. Caroline Campbell and Alan
Chong suggest that Gentile Bellini used a non-Muslim woman dressed up in a made-up
costume that was intended to appear Turkish for his drawing of A Turkish Woman: see
Bellini and the East, 101.
68. Nicolay, Nauigations, 54.
69. Wilson describes how "the demand for portraits of the Ottomans grew during
periods of conflict," in World in Venice, 224.
70. See Raby, "From Europe to Istanbul," in The Sultan's Portrait, 136-63; and
Rosamond Mack, Bazaar to Piazza: Islamic Trade and Italian Art, 1300-1600 (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 2002), 166.
71. Cristofano dellAltissimo's copy of the Giovio portrait of Roxelana is the ver
sion of Beham's discussed above. Altissimo's portrait of Mihrimah is clearly related to the
Titian group, and Wilde suggests that the prototype must have been Titian's original; see
Wilde, "St. Catherine," 4.
72. F. W. H. Hollstein, Dutch and Flemish Engravings, vol. IX, Pieter van der
Heyden (Amsterdam: M. Hertzberger, 1949-), 32. Siileyman also appeared in this series,
although Roxelana is absent.
73. Fischer, Melchior Lorck, vol. 1, 106-7. Lorich did inform the duke in 1560
that he had completed portraits of the Persian king, the Turkish emperor, and the Duke
of Bavaria.
74. Wilson, World in Venice, 188 and 190.
75. For additional details of her history see Yermolenko,"Roxolana"; Yermolenko,
"Introduction" to Roxolana in European Literature; Michel Sokolniki, "La Sultane
Ruthene," Belleten 23 (1959): 229-39; and Peirce, Imperial Harem, 58-65.
76. Most notable of the customs broken were their legal marriage and Stileymans
near-monogamy with Roxelana, rather than multiple slave concubines and sexual partners
of the sultan; see Peirce, Imperial Harem, 60-61.
77. Peirce, 58-65, cites a number of ambassadorial reports.
78. See Yermolenko, "Roxolana in Europe," in Roxolana in European Literature;
and Yermolenko, "Reading the Other: Roxolana in European History and Literature,"
National Social Science Journal, 32, no. 1 (2009): 202-10.
79. Busbecq, Turkish Letters, 49.
80. Bassano, I Costumi, 44. "Le porta tal'amore che fa marauigliare tutti i suoi
sudditi in tanto che dicono ch'ella l'ha ammaliato, perche la chiamano Ziardi, che vuol dir

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Strega"; translation from Yermolenko, Roxolana in European Literature

this chapter —"Of the love that the grand Turk has for the Sultana, h
che il gran Turco porta alia Sultana sua moglie] — also underscores S
Roxelana.
81. Peirce, Imperial Harem, 59.

82. Ibid., 59.
83. Ibid., 21, 85. Ottoman succession was a fraught process, often involving frat
ricide.
84. Ibid., 79,81. Peirce notes that there is no actual evidence for their involvement,
although she suggests that the "efforts of Rüstern Pasha were undoubtedly instrumental
in Mustafa's downfall."
85. Busbecq, 28-33.
86. French and German translations were published in 1556. An English transla
tion was published in 1567.
87. Quotations taken from the 1567 English translation by Moflfan, in William
Painters The Second Tome of the Palace of Pleasure, ed. Joseph Jacobs (London: David
Nutt, 1890), 401, 403, and 404.
88. Gabriel Bounin, La Soltane, ed. Michael Heath (Exeter: University of Exeter,
1977).
89. Knolles, The Generali Historie of the Turkes (London: A. Islip, 1603), 759,
Quoted in Yermolenko "Roxolana in Europe," 28.
90. Peirce, Imperial Harem, 86.
91. Ibid. Wilde,"St. Catherine," 5, also suggests that Western interest in Mihrimah
heightened with her marriage because it made her politically significant.
92. The inscription on her portrait in the Musée Fabre in Montpellier reads,
"Cameria Solimán / Imperatoris Filia/Rostanis Bassae / Uxor." [Cameria, daughter of
Emperor Solimán, wife of Rostanis Bassae]. Her portrait in the Mazovian Museum has
a similar inscription.
93. Goughe, On the Ofspring, 71.
94. Benjamin Arbel convincingly problematizes this account of Nur Banu's ori
gins and explains why both the Venetian senate and Nur Banu would have found value
in this story even as the Venetians apparently questioned it; see Arbel, "Nur Banu (c.
1530-1583); A Venetian Sultana?" Turcica 24 (1992): 241-59.
95. S. A. Skilliter, "The Letters of the Venetian 'Sultana Nur Banu and her Kira
to Venice," in Studia Turcologica Memoriae Alexii Bombacu Dicata, ed. Aldo Gallotta
(Naples: Ugo Marazzi, 1982).
96. See Andrea, Women and Islam,
97. European portraits of Ottoman sultans tended to be similarly restrained
despite extensive written discussions of their cruelty and tyranny,
98. Wilson, World in Venice, 76. See, also, Ulrike Ilg, "The Cultural Sign of
Costume Books in Sixteenth-Century Europe," in Clothing Culture: 1350-1650, ed.

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Catherine Richardson (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004), 29-47; and Ulinka Rublack, Dressing
Up: Cultural Identity in Renaissance Europe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011).
99. The fascination with Ottoman women's dress appears to have been widespread.
Dallam's description of his forbidden view into the harem in Dallam's Travels includes a
detailed description of the dress worn by the women, and Postéis République des Tures
also includes passages on women's dress.
100. See Olga Nefedova, A Journey into the World of the Ottomans: The Art of
Jean-Baptiste Vanmour (Milan: Skira, 2009). There are some instances of harem imagery
from the seventeenth century, such as the overtly sexual title page from Michael Baudier,
Histoire Genéralle du Serrait (Paris: C. Craimoisy, 1631).
101. See Denny, "Orientalism"; and Yeazell, Harems of the Mind.
102. Grosrichard, Sultan's Court, 125-26; Ali Behdad, "The Eroticized Orient:
Images of the Harem in Montesquieu and his Precursors," Stanford French Review 13
(1989): 123; Kahf, Western Representations, 7, 97, 103-16; Zeevi, Producing Desire, 152,
164; Yeazell, Harems of the Mind, 3-5; and Nabil Matar,"The Representations of Muslim
Women in Renaissance England," The Muslim World 86, no. 1 (1996): 50-51.
103. The invincible Turk formulation is from Mustafa Soykut, The Image of the
Turk in Italy: A History of the "Other" in Early Modern Europe, 1454-1683 (Berlin: K.
Schwarz, 2001). On the Turks as "the terror of the world" in the early modern period, see
((arakman, Terror of the World.

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Representations of Elite Ottoman Women

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Before the Odalisque: Renaissance Representations of Elite Ottoman Women

Author(s): Heather Madar

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/23617325

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Before the Odalisque: Renaissance Representations

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Beginning with the earliest encounters of the Wes

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Faustus tooke the fairest by the hand, and led her i

The subsequent report of the event by one of the

The charged nature of the harem is also underlined

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dor of Ferdinand I to Istanbul, who stress the inaccessibility of Ottoman

There are some significant differences between sixteenth-century

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tans Bayezid II and Murad II are instead shown rela

Imagery suggestive of later depictions of the

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Fig. 1. Francesco da Castello (att.), Sultan Murad II, in Historia Turcorum

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tropes. An erotic charge is also apparent in a scene

A final image shows three Turkish women playi

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Fig. 2. Melchior Lorich, Harp Player, 1583, © Trustees of the British

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The Lorich images and the illustrations from the H

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Images corresponding to this type appear in both printed and painted

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Fig. 3. Sebald Beham, Portrait of the Wife of Sultan Sü

The portraits by Beham and Pagani differ in so

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JLapiu hclla epiu fjaoritadonn^

ylnVenefk per Mafh»o Pagan in frcl

Fig. 4. Anon., published by Matteo Pagani, Portrait of Roxelana, 1540—50,

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portraits. As is true of the sultana images generally, h

In the Beham portrait, the cap in the center of the

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Fig. 5. Studio of Titian, La Sultana Rossa, 1550s, Bequest of John

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Fig. 6. Titian, Cameria, Daughter of Suleiman the Magnificent as St.

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Fig. 7. Titian, Portrait of a Lady, 1555. Samuel Kress Collection, Image

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garb, which initially appears to be a plausible European interpretation

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Fig. 8. Melchior Lorich, Ruziae Soldane, from Wolgerissene und

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published until the seventeenth century, they had no immediate effect on

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Fig.9Camil,fromBisard,Jean cques,HabitusVariumOrbisGentium,158 © 209MusemAsociates/LACM/ArtResourceNY.

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representing any specific woman.64 While the generic

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[sixteenth] century, images identified as Turks ... were

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Busbecq described Mustafa's execution in some detail and discussed the

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