Batılı sanatçıların fırçalarından çıkan hayali İstanbul manzaralarının kökeninde Batılıların kafasında daha önce oluşmuş Doğu imgesi yatar. Binbir Gece ve diğer Doğu masallarının yarattığı Doğu imgesinin yaşatılmasını sağlayan İstanbul betimlemeleri Batılıların her zaman ilgisini çekmiştir. İstanbul kentinin siluetini belirleyen kubbeler ve minareler, kuşkusuz sanatçıların hafızalarında oluşan kent görüntüsünün de ana öğeleri olmuştur. Ancak bu kubbe ve minareler hayali İstanbul görünümlerinde, kompozisyonun diğer kurgusal öğeleri yanında, Osmanlı mimari üslubundan farklı bir üslupta resmedilmişlerdir. Aykut Gürçağlar bu çalışmasında Osmanlı İmparatorluğunun Doğu'yu temsil eden yegane güç olarak ortaya çıktığı 15.yüzyıl ortalarından 19.yüzyıl sonuna kadar, Türk imgesinin Batılı zihinlerdeki değişimine koşut olarak, hayali İstanbul manzaralarının oluşum sürecini inceliyor.
SUMMARY
Imaginary Istanbul Landscapes
Istanbul as the capital city of the Byzantine Empire and the Ottoman Empire was recognized as the personification of the Orient since Middle Ages. The origins of Orientalism go back to the early Middle Ages. In England and France the concept of the Turk formed with the fanaticism of Christianity and compiled in the notion of the Crusades at that time. The meaning of being a Muslim was being the child of satan and the follower of Muhammad was an impostor according to Christian world.
The image of the Turk as a terrifying warrior dominated the European’s concept of his Eastern neighbor from the time of Ottoman ascendancy over the Byzantine Empire in 1453 until the decline of Ottoman power in 1699. In 1453 the very year that Istanbul fell, the Ottoman Empire extended previous treaties of safe passage with Genoa and Venice and granted concessions for trade with the Ottoman Empire. Mehmed II patronized Italian artists. Among the artists he invited to and employed in Istanbul were Matteo di Pasti, Maestro Paoli and the medallist Constanzo da Ferrara . In 1479, after sixteen years of war, Mehmed II made peace with Venice. That year in answer to his request for “a good painter” the Doge’s official artist, Gentile Bellini came to Istanbul and was presented to the sultan by the Bailo of Venice. He painted potraits of Mehmed II. At the end of the 15th century Istanbul was depicted by Northern artists, e. g. Michael Wolgemuth, having gained imaginary Byzantine character. Yet she was given a familiar view in order to make her neighbor to them by the North Italian artists.
In the 16th century the Ottoman Empire became the strongest power in Europe. The relations between France and the Ottoman Empire developed and concept of the Turk transformed into “strong, rich and mystic”. On the other hand in the 16th century traveller painters started to travel to the capital of the Ottoman Empire. Some of those well-known painters were Melchior Lorichs from Flensburg and Nicolas de Nicolay. Both of them depicted the costumes, daily life, army and landscapes in the Ottoman capital. Books of travels with engravings of Istanbul reflected the increasing interest.
In the 17th century the Ottoman Empire easily improved its relations with Europe because of her receiding power against the Western world. Books of travels with engravings continued to be printed in the 17th century was Cornelius de Bruyn who made engravings of Istanbul. In 1635 Matthäus Merian who was a Swiss engraver, depicted the panorama of Istanbul, from which he used the panorama of Istanbul by W. Dilich in 1606 and panorama of Istanbul by M. Lorichs in 1559. M. Merian showed Seraglio point as a Romanesque settlement without any green texture surrounding its envoirons.
In the 18th century connections between France and the Ottoman Empire gained a new form. Yirmisekiz Çelebi Mehmed Efendi who was sent to Paris as the ambassador of the Ottoman Empire, created a great interest amongst aristocrats in the court of Louıs XV. This event encouraged a new vogue named “Turquerie” which centered in Paris and spread throughout Europe. Foreign embassies in Istanbul employed painters to depict the costumes, daily life and topographic sceneries of Istanbul in the 18th century. In addition to the painters who were employed by the western embassies, Van Mour, Liotard, Carrey, de Favray and Melling also made engravings of landscapes of Istanbul. They were called “the Bosphorus painters”. In the 18th century there was a vogue of exoticism which centered around Paris. Artists of the 18th century enjoyed painting imaginary landscapes of the Orient. This fashion of Turquerie, of course, reached Italy at the time started to paint Istanbul landscapes from imagination. Guardi brothers painted a series of imaginary Istanbul landscapes in 1741-1742. These paintings of imaginary Istanbul views were ordered by Marshal Comte von der Schulenburg who was an “ex-condotierre” who fought against the Ottomans in 1716. When Comte von der Schulenburg ordered these pictures to Guardis’ atelier, the Guardi brothers used J-B. Van Mour’s engravings depicting Istanbul landscapes, Ottoman costumes, rather than visiting Istanbul. Yet they did not copy J-B. Van Mour’s depictions directly. They put the main theme of J-B. Van Mour and added their images in to the picture. A completely imaginary fictioning by Guardis’ atelier. It is also known fact that the Guardi brothers made many “caprices” focusing on Venice. Looking at these one can easiliy take the Istanbul caprices by Guardi brothers are reminiscent of the Rococo flavour found in the “fête galantes” of A. Watteau. They also displayed the colorist tendency of Venetian painting by using thin brush strokes and bright colors.
The 19th century brought a new movement of colonization on the one hand and Orientalism which fostered colonization in artistic and cultural points of view on the other. The term Orientalist meaning someone who is knowledgeable about Oriental people, their languages, history, customs, religious and literature-also applies to Western painters of the Oriental world. For these artists whose numbers grew rapidly in the early 19th century the Orient meant first of all the Levant. It then included Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Palestine and the North African Coast. Spain, because of its Arab past, and Venice because of its historical connections with Ottoman capital, were viewed by many as the gateway to the Orient. There was no school of Orientalist painting the pictures were linked thematically rather than stylistically.
Many meeting points had, of course, existed between the Orient and Occident before the 19th century, through a long history of mercantile, diplomatic and artistic relations. Examples include the Crusades, the close links between Venice and the Ottoman Empire, Britain’s establishment in India and France’s use of commercial ports in the Levant. But, with the exception of European artists settled in Istanbul, Orientalism had been nearly exclusively decorative. Chinese, Japanese and Turkish cultures and a general hotch potch of “Eastern” styles influenced clothes, architecture and works of art. The story book entitled “The Thousand and One Nights”, popularly known as “The Arabian Nights”, helped spread the vogue for exoticism, which still had no particular regard for exactitude.
The passion for Egyptology at the end of the 18th century, the founding of schools of Oriental studies and, most importantly, Napoleon Bonaparte’s expedition to Egypt in 1798, brought the East into public view. The illustrated albums by Baron Dominique Vivant Denon of his survey of ancient and modern Egypt, as well as the Napoleonic history paintings in Oriental settings by the Baron Gros, Anne Louis Girodet Troison and others, laid the foundation for the Orientalist movement. The Greeks’ struggle for independence from Ottoman rule, the Romantics’ espousal of their cause, the taking of Algiers by the French in 1830 and E. Delacroix’s too famous journey to Morocco in 1832 all helped to open wide the doors to hundreds of artists who were to make the journey to the Orient. Travellers and stay at homes alike often relied havily on literary sources for their works. As the number of steamships and railway networks grew, so more and more painters joined the streams of people investigating, exploring, analyzing or just meandering in the East. These artists were primarily French and British, for other European countries, without major empires, the Orient was remote. The French artists were for the most part attached to military, scientific or diplomatic missions sent to countries around the Mediterranean basin and to Persia . The English on the other hand, concentrated mainly on Egypt and on Palestine. The associations between the Bible and the Orient were very important, not only for such Victorian painters as David Wilkie, Holman Hunt and Frederick Goodall, but also for the Frenchmen James Tissot and Horace Vernet. They travelled primarily to find authentic backgrounds for their Biblical subjects, convinced that the gestures and attitutes of people they saw were survivals from ancient times.
With the beginning of Orientalism in the 19th century improved the means of travelling, encouraged European artists to travel to the Orient. Books of travels with engravings were printed in increasing numbers in the 19th century. Therefore archaelogical surveys, scientific investigations and the movement of Realism in addition to Romanticism enabled artists to depict the Orient in a more realistic way. At that time the caprices of the 18th century were transformed into imaginary landscapes due to the decorative mysticism and the unattainability of the harem.
The tradition of making engravings of Istanbul continued in the 19th century. The engravings depicting Istanbul were placed in the books and albums of travels. William Bartlett, Thomas Allom, Eugéne N. Flandin, John F. Lewis were the most important engravers of that time. Most of the engravings were made in the realistic style, but E. Flandin, W. Bartlett sometimes changed the sizes of architectural elements, added different ornemental structures-borrowed from Indian, Arabian architectures, onion shaped domes, tower like minarets, double colored stone structures, horseshoe arches-or illustrated imaginary background. Painters such as Felix Ziem, James Webb, Godchaux, J-L. Gérôme applied imaginary Istanbul landscapes adding architectural elements brought from North African, Indian architectures, on canvases. The fact that these artists were influenced from Orientalism was laid the ideas of G. Flaubert, Lord Byron, A. de Lamartine and V. Hugo on recreating the Orient.
In the 18th century imaginary Istanbul landscapes were the part of the desire to show, Oriental costumes, traditions and their entertainments according to Western imagination in Rococo taste. This is the result of the interest in exoticism. But in the 19th century many things about the Orient changed. Most of the artists found ways of travelling to the Orient, many of them visited Istanbul. A great program for the colonization of the Orient was carried out under the leaderships of Britain and France. In the second part of the 19th century artists used photography in their paintings. Hundreds of Istanbul landscapes were made in photographic reality in the 19th century. Yet a lot of imaginary Istanbul landscapes were also made in the same century. Some of the artists who made imaginary Istanbul landscapes visited Istanbul while some did not. The ones who visited Istanbul might have expected huge, flamboyant buildings, palaces and mosques but the modesty of the city and the simplicity of Ottoman architecture probably disappointed them and they preferred to apply the so-called North African architecture in an Istanbul landscape because it was more welcome by the European . The other artists who did not visit Istanbul used photographs or engravings in the books of travels and they created mystic, styleless imaginary Istanbul landscapes. Figures in the imaginary Istanbul landscapes did not have any functions. Yet sometimes they were placed on the first scene so as to point out the resignation of the Oriental woman or putting Europeans to be the slaves at the slave market. It is not easy to find chronological exactitude in the costumes of the figures in the imaginary Istanbul landscapes, like J-L. Gérôme’s picture of the costume of the harem guard. We can say that in the 19th century the imaginary ideas about the Orient were completely reflected in the imaginary landscapes of Istanbul. Despite the fact that the Orient was scrutinized better in the 19th century, western artists did not give up seeing the Orient the way they loved to see it.