Le Hay, - and Charles de Ferriol (1652-1718).

Estimate

3,000 - 5,000 GBP

bidding is closed

Description

Recueil de cent estampes représentent differentes nations du Levant... [Part Two:] Explication des cent estampes... Avec de nouvelles estampes de ceremonies turques qui ont aussi leurs explications. Paris: Jacques Collombat, 1714-1715

folio (485 x 331mm.), [6], 26pp., illustration: engraved title, and 102 plates (comprising 100 numbered plates and 2 unnumbered), 3 double-page, one leaf of engraved music, binding: contemporary speckled calf, spine in compartments with raised bands gilt, plate 76 ('Hongrois') trimmed to image and mounted to size (caption and number supplied in ink), joints starting, head of spine chipped

Literature

Blackmer 591; Atabey 429; Colas 1819-20; Brunet III, 947-8; Cohen-de Ricci 392; Lipperheide 413, 414

Catalogue Note

first edition. a fine clean copy. The plates are based on paintings in the collection of the Marquis de Ferriol (1652-1722), French ambassador to the Porte. In 1707, Ferriol commissioned Jean Baptiste van Mour to paint one hundred pictures of different officials and races in their costumes: the chief eunuch; a Turkish man cutting himself to show his love for his mistress; a Jewish woman taking goods to Turkish harems; a Greek bride; Turkish women at leisure; Albanians, Bulgarians, Greeks, Persians and Arabs. When the paintings were complete, Ferriol helped le Hay to publish the present prints of the pictures. Le Hay's work was an instant success and the plates quickly became the principal source of turqueries for artists and publishers throughout Europe. In recognition of van Mour's talents, he was granted the unique post of 'Peintre ordinaire du Roi en Levant' in 1725.

Van Mour's paintings (and the plates that derive from them) show Constantinople as a cosmopolitan place with Muslims and non-Muslims uniting in shared 'Ottoman' pleasures. Armenians, Franks, Greeks and Persians are shown drinking coffee, playing mankeh (a version of backgammon), or making music. (It is interesting to note that the role of Constantinople as a place of pleasure is so often indicated in the words it gave to the outside work: sofa, kiosk, coffee, kaftan, turban.)