Sabancý University’s Sakýp Sabancý Museum used to be a family mansion set in a typically Italianate landscape of tall stone pines overlooking the Bosphorus. Today the museum’s new director, Dr Nazan Ölçer, has introduced a number of changes, giving the state-of-the-art annex greater autonomy as the museum’s main gallery, where she plans to hold three major exhibitions a year.
Dr Ölçer has made an auspicious start with the exhibition, Ottoman Splendour in Florentine Collections. Works of art collected by the Medici family, who for nearly four centuries were influential figures in Italy's economic, political and cultural life, are being exhibited in Turkey for the first time.
FROM THE MUSEUMS OF FLORENCE TO ISTANBUL
From the terrace, now enter the annex directly through its glass doors; go down the staircase and through a hallway with information panels on either side; walk around the blaze of colour of a 17th century Ottoman standard – and you will find the stern visages of Bayezid I, Mehmed II, Süleyman the Magnificent, and Murad IV staring at you from one wall, while around and across the room two scenes of “Oriental Hunters” crowded with camels, elephants and ostriches, as well as six huge paintings collectively called “Turks with Hunting Dogs” occupy the other main walls. In between are spread samples of Mamluk and Ottoman arms and armour, bowls and dishes of beaten and engraved copper, and other examples of Muslim metalwork such as large candle-holders for mosques. Oblique frames support a number of Ushak “Holbein” and “Lotto” carpets. Go down another floor and you will come up against 16th or 17th century kemha and çatma panels, along with more carpets, including a threesome (of a medallion Ushak of the 17th century, another small medallion carpet datable to the 17th-18th centuries, and a smaller village rug) that are all exquisitely designed and stunning in terms of their lustre and vivid colours. A total of 108 objects in all, in a well-organised, focused and elegant gem of an exhibition.
THE EAST THROUGH WESTERN EYES
What makes it extra special is that it does not come out of Istanbul’s own museums or indeed anywhere else in the Near or Middle East, but from six state museums in Florence including the famous Uffizi Gallery. This, then, is what leading members of the Italian merchant-aristocracy collected not from within their own cultural matrix, but across the great religious divide between Christendom and Islamdom. It is, in other words, not the East in or by itself, but the East in the West’s eye, in the outward gaze of the Renaissance. It is also a meaningful reminder that these men of the Late Middle Ages or the dawn of the Early Modern Era did not just fight but also traded with one another, and that when they met at the market place, they did not just buy and sell in silent hostility but spoke, made conversation, exchanged not just commodities but also information and ideas. And they came to know each other well enough to be able to operate across boundaries that were much more permeable than is commonly supposed. Let us consider the following examples of cross-cultural encounters...
CULTURAL ‘OTHERS’
On bold display on the upper floor is a “Holbein” carpet from Western Anatolia with a noble blazon “certainly belonging to a European family,” says A. Boralevi in the catalogue. This means that through the Italian merchants in the Aegean islands, leading Renaissance patricians could place orders with the Turcoman craftsmen of the mainland to weave carpets according to their special requirements, including those bearing their family arms. In his foreign policy, Mehmed II always endeavoured to isolate Venice to the maximum extent. In 1477 and 1478, the Conqueror ordered massive raids against northern Italy. In that same year of 1478, the Pazzi Conspiracy in Florence left Giuliano de’ Medici dead and Lorenzo ‘il Magnifico wounded. One of the assassins, Bernardo Bardini, fled to Istanbul, where he was promptly arrested and returned to Florence.
Meanwhile, invited by the sultan, Gentile Bellini – who was the doges’ official portraitist – arrived in Istanbul in September 1479. He stayed until January 1481 and in November 1480 painted his famous portrait of the Conqueror (now in the National Gallery in London) very much in the image of a European ruler. While Bellini was still in Istanbul, an Ottoman expeditionary fleet commanded by Gedik Ahmed Pasha dropped anchor off Otranto on 25 July 1480, and captured the city on 11 August, withdrawing nine months later only because of the sudden death of the sultan. The year 1543 found the Ottomans fighting at Marseille in alliance with France against Emperor Charles V. It was at this time that Süleyman’s grand admiral Barbarossa made a present of a series of miniatures to Count Virginio Orsini of Anguillara as a memento of their comradeship in arms. These miniatures became the basis, through several successive copyings, for the sultans’ portraits that are on display at this exhibition. Alongside them, furthermore, hangs a portrait of Ferdinando II de’ Medici (1610-1670) dressed as a sultan. Now Ferdinando II was one of the very few Medicis who actually fought against the Ottomans, taking to the sea with a naval force of galleys under the League of Santo Stefano, and in 1645 helping Venice defend Crete against the Ottoman expeditionary force. Deep down, “both dynasties enjoyed seeing themselves in such an imaginary mirror, and beyond their military opposition demanded by objective considerations, perceived one another as their cultural alter ego, for whom they felt mutual respect and profound curiosity,” Mario Scalini notes.
ENCOUNTER OF CIVILISATIONS
Visitors to the exhibition find themselves gazing in fascination at pictures on the last two wall panels portraying a game of cirit (jereed) in Istanbul and a knights’ tournament in Santa Croce Square in Florence. What is so striking about them is their similarity, revealing not a culture clash but a cultural encounter.
The exhibition will stay open until late March, by which time the Bosphorus is likely to show in brighter patches of blue through the dark green branches of the stone pines.
The photographs are taken from the exhibition catalog entitled ‘Ottoman Splendour in Florentine Collections’ published by Sabancý University’s Sakýp Sabancý Museum.