Costume watercolours--The Oriental Album of Bartell Schachman, 1590.

Bartell Schachman (d.1614), his arms and portrait on preliminary leaf. Schachman was one of Gdansk's leading citizens, having been a councillor of the Right Main City from 1594 and became mayor in 1605.
A book from Schachman's library, printed in Gdansk in 1596, was sold in these rooms last year as part of the Library of the Earls of Macclesfield: 2 October 2008, lot 4816, Nicolaus Volckmar. Dictionarium trilingue tripartitum ad discendam linguam Latinam Polonicam et Germanicam accomodatum. Gdansk: Jacobus Rhodus, 1596, 4to, contemporary calf, upper cover stamped in gilt 'H. Bartel. Schachman'.

cf. Metin And. Istanbul in the 16th century: the city, the palace, daily life. (Istanbul, 1994)

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Sixteenth-century albums of costume and life in Constantinople are very rare at auction.
During the sixteenth century Constantinople, the capital of the Sultans, excited as much artistic interest as Rome and fascinated western Europeans. As more peaceful conditions prevailed so many travellers came to the city and there was an increasing demand for pictorial as well as written records of life in the Ottoman capital. Travellers and diplomats commissioned artists as an essential part of their duty to bring back to their countries as much information as possible about all matters Turkish. Printed illustrations could not match the colour and finesse of original drawings and these albums of watercolours were therefore made for the elite of society including royalty, nobles, wealthy merchants, travellers and diplomats.

This album, commissioned by Bartell Schachman, who became mayor of Gdansk in 1604, is dated 1590 and contains a large number of full-page watercolour drawings, depicting the costume and people of Constantinople, together with scenes of everyday life, festivals and ceremonies. People depicted include Turkish officials, soldiers, archers, noble men and women, farmers, shopkeepers and slaves. There are processional scenes including a wedding, Christian and Jewish funerals and women on their way to the baths. Sports and pastimes include Turkish soldiers on horseback playing cirit or jereed, dancers, musicians and entertainers and a man being massaged in a hammam. A festival scene shows men playing on decorated swings while musicians play. There are a group of drawings depicting scenes of justice and punishments being carried out including a woman being punished for false witness or adultery, sitting backwards on a donkey with ox entrails on her head; another shows a man having the soles of his feet beaten and one shows criminals hanging from hooks. Scenes of charity include a man feeding stray dogs and cats and another showing a man buying caged birds to release them. There are a number of costume drawings showing Jews and Christians, men and women, from across the Ottoman empire, including Tripoli, Syria, Tartary, Georgia, Persia, Cairo, Ragusa (Dubrovnik), Karamania and various Greek islands including Patmos, Lesbos, Korcula (Korchula), Chios, Rhodes and Crete.

A number of decrees were imposed on the non-Muslim population of Constantinople in the late sixteenth century, including banning Christians and Jews from wearing the same colours as Muslims and forbidding non-Muslims from wearing turbans and determining the colour of hats for Jews (red) and Christians (black) and these are portrayed in this album.

Many of the drawings and scenes illustrated are typical of those depicted in albums of this period and there appears to be a strong connection with another late sixteenth century album preserved in the Landesbibliothek and Murkardsche Bibliothek in Kassel, Germany, many of which are illustrated in Metin And's book (see below). However some of the costume drawings and the farming scenes are unusual and during our research we did not find other comparable scenes.