Journey to Constantinople

by Steve Goddard

The ten woodcuts that comprise the seven scenes of the panaroma described below would, if placed end to end, be about 15 feet long. The copy in the Spencer Museum of Art is bound into an album that breaks most of the scenes in awkward places.

The scenes you will see below, then, are not as they would appear in the album. Instead, album images have been electronically "spliced" to represent scenes in their entirety.

To Western Europeans in the early 16th century, the Ottoman Empire -- sprawling between northern Africa and the Balkans, Hungary and Arabia -- was more than an advanced civilization. It was also a military, economic and religious threat.

Therefore, when the Turkish army reached the gates of Vienna in 1529, European interest in Turkish civilization intensified.

One of the most remarkable documents of contact between the peoples of northern Europe and the Ottoman Empire is the series of 10 woodcuts, comprising seven scenes, designed by Pieter Coecke van Aelst (1502-1550). It chronicles a trip to Constantinople -- Istanbul today.

This series of images, The Customs and Fashions of the Turks [Moers e fachon de Faire de Turcz], was drawn by Coecke in 1533, only four years after the Turks had reached Vienna. It was published posthumously as a series of prints by his widow, Maria Verhulst, in 1553.

Coecke was active in Antwerp as a painter, architect, tapestry designer and printer. When he traveled to Constantinople in 1533, he was probably in the entourage of a diplomatic delegation. The great chronicler of northern European art, Carel van Mander, described Coecke's trip in detail:

He was invited by certain tapestry weavers at Brussels, named Van den Moeyen, to undertake a journey to Constantinople in Turkey, where they intended to establish a trade and make a precious and beautiful tapestry and hangings for the Grand Turk, and to this end they employed Pieter Coecke to paint diverse things to be shown to the Turkish Emperor. But abiding by his Mohammedan law, the Turk would have no images of men or animals; so that nothing came of the plan but time spent in traveling and great loss to the speculators.

Pieter, having dwelt at Constantinople about a year, and having learned the Turkish tongue, and not liking to be idle, made drawings for his own pleasure of the city and neighborhood from nature, and also seven pieces, which have been cut in wood and printed, wherein various customs of the Turks are set forth.

More recent scholarship has suggested that this description of the journey may be inaccurate -- that it was actually undertaken at the behest of Flemish weavers in order to study the secrets of Turkish tapestry manufacture.

Coecke's panoramic documentary is divided into sections by alternating male and female "terms" (the name art historians have given to pillars with human heads and torsos). For several generations, Coecke's Customs and Fashions of the Turks was a visual textbook of Turkish and Balkan culture and costume; even Rembrandt owned a copy, which he no doubt consulted for its wealth of information.

Each of the seven scenes of the Customs and Fashions of the Turks was described by texts accompanying an early edition of the prints. I've written translations of each of these texts (in italics) and then added more information, based on the excellent studies of William Stirling-Maxwell and Georges Marlier, after the translations (in roman type).

Let the journey begin.

For further reading:

Georges Marlier, La Renaissance flamande, Pierre Coecke d'Alost. Brussels, 1966.

Richard S. Field and Stephen Goddard, Sets and Series, Prints from the Low Countries. New Haven, 1984.

Carel van mander, Dutch and Flemish Painters. Translations from the Schilderboeck (trans. Constant van de Wall). New York, 1969.

William Stirling-Maxwell, The Turks in MDXXXIII. London & Edinburgh, 1873.

NOTE: The text that follows is a modified version of one of Goddard's contributions to Field and Goddard (1984).