European University Institute Library

Turquerie, an eighteenth-century European fantasy, Haydn Williams

eng

Includes bibliographical references (pages 225-229) and index

illustrations

index present

non fiction

Turquerie

bibliography

891658439

Haydn Williams

an eighteenth-century European fantasy

This is the first book ... to identify the key elements of what in our own time has become a popular and collectable area of the fine art and decorative arts: turquerie. With the arrival of Ottoman embassies and their elaborate entourages at the courts of Europe in the early eighteenth century, a fascination with all things Turkish took hold among royalty and aristocracy that lasted until the French Revolution. Turbaned figures appeared in paintings, as ceramic figures, and on the stage; tented boudoirs became the rage; and crossed crescents, palm trees, and camels featured on wall panels, furniture, and enamel boxes. Here Haydn Williams, an expert on the decorative arts, shows how it was a theme that sparked varied responses in different places. Its most intense and long-lasting expression was in France, but its reach was broad-from a pavilion built by Catherine II in Russia to the Turkish tents erected along the Elbe to celebrate a royal marriage in Dresden in 1719; from an ivory statuette of a janissary created for King Augustus II of Poland to the costumes worn for a carnival celebration in Rome in 1748.--Provided by publisher

Europe and Constantinople after 1453 -- Connections in the 18th century -- Playing the Turk in Europe -- Reflections of the Ottoman world in European painting -- Tents and other structures -- Evoking the Ottoman world in European interiors -- Conjuring up the Ottoman world in European applied arts -- Continuity and change in the 19th century