Timur the Great's imprisonment of the Ottoman Sultan Bayezid, large miniature on a leaf from an illuminated album amicorum, manuscript on paper [southern Germany (perhaps Tübingen), mid-sixteenth century (before 1561)]

Estimate

3,000 - 5,000 GBP

bidding is closed

Description

Paper

a leaf, 187mm. by 135mm., with two large scenes showing the imprisonment of the Sultan as reported in contemporary sources: (a) the Sultan tied by his waist with a golden rope to Timur's table, as the conqueror in red robes and his followers stand behind it as a naked servant carries in a golden dish; and (b) the Sultan bound and on all fours being used as a mounting-block by Timur, and similarly bound in his gilded cage (which in Marlowe's retelling of the story caused his death one year into his imprisonment, as he dashed his brains out on its bars), details touched in liquid gold, panel beneath containing explanatory text in Latin, on verso: the arms of Achatius Heckelperger of Hohenberg and his inscription dated 1561, slight discolouration at edges, else good and presentable condition, framed

Catalogue Note

From the same album as the previous lot. Timur (or Tamerlane; 1336-1405) was a conqueror of west, south and central Asia, and the founder of the Timurid dynasty, as well as the great-great grandfather of Babur, the founder of the Mughal dynasty. He sought to restore the Mongol empire, and battled against a number of Muslim states, particularly the Sultanate of Delhi. In 1400 he incited and led a rebellion of Turkic beyliks against their Ottoman masters, and in 1402 succeeded in capturing the Sultan Bayezid I (1354-1403). His efforts against the Muslims, as well as his theatrical flair for humbling his captives (as in the present miniature), caused him to be seen as a potential ally of Christendom, and he has held a continuing place in the popular imagination of the West ever since. He is the subject of numerous late medieval histories, a play by Christopher Marlowe (Tamburlaine the Great), operas by Handel (Tamerlano, 1724) and Vivaldi (Bajazet, 1735), and Edgar Allan Poe's first published poem (Tamerlane).