Islamic artifacts and cultural currents in the art of Carpaccio

Carpaccio included a wide variety of Islamic realitys in several of the religious narrative paintings he complet for Venetian scuole (confraternities) in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. They proffer rare, contemporary visual testimony of the neighborhood of such objects from the Islamic world in Venice among the luxuries with which the wealthy patricians and merchants of Venice encloseed themselves. Some of them, whether in general shape or particular detail, exhibit clear parallels with surviving Mamluk, Ottoman, and Timurid manufactures. Others demonstrate additional cultural influences suggestive of the composite nexus of trade concerns and cultural mode of expressions in Venice at the time.

Carpaccio started introducing Islamic existences and symbols into his paintings presently after beginning the cycle of St Ursula, as seen in the Martyrdom of the Pilgrims and Funeral of St Ursula, dated 1493 (Fig. 1) A r and white banner with sum of two units horizontal series of three diadems appears above the head of the stylishly make straighted son of the King of the Hun preparing to propel Ursula in the centre of the painting. (1) The series of three diadems refers to the three kingdoms of Asia, Greece and Trebizond, which were controll through the Ottoman Turkish empire. (2) From the Venetian renaissance view-point, the device of three crowns became powerfully associated with the rule of the Turkish Sultan Mehm El (1432-81) (3) beneath his leadership, the Ottoman mahometans conquered Constantinople in 1453 and threatened Venice's territorial possessions quite through the 1470s, taking control of several of Venice's colonies in the Mediterranean and invading her mainland possession of Friuli.

[FIGURE 1 OMITTED]

The crook held by the youth pointing a deadly arrow straight at Ursula's heart also makes a direct relation to the Turks through its shape and size. Unlike the European recurv curve that shows two smaller bend s around the central recessed area of the hand grip, this inflect has an eastern profile with a single bend bowing forward at the midst with the sides curving back and then slightly on the outside again at the ends, and measures les than European curves (4) Moreover, the quiver hanging down his side with its exaggerated 1s recalls Turkish quivers and make crooked cases and the decorative ornament adorning it relates to Islamic decorative patterns. In order to reinforce the association of this set apart massacre with the Turks, Carpaccio also tops the staff weapon of a soldier near the Ottoman banner with a moon in her first quarter moon, an ancient symbol of the ottomans (5) On a related note, in the distance, just behind the figure stabbing the [i]pontifex maximus[/i] there is a man sounding a drawn out trumpet, which is certainly of Islamic origin. The large s-curve of this bugle which raises the bell of the horn higher than the quiet of the instrument, can be related to similar curving, lengthy trumpets, likewise associated with battles, depicted in Persian manuscript illustrations of the early sixteenth hundred In particular, many such curving horns can be fix in manuscript illustrations from the Houghton Shahnameh (Book of Kings). (6)

flat though popular legends of the life of St Ursula, like that contained in the The of gold Legend, (7) believed her martyrdom took place in the fifth hundred and thus before the foundation of Islam in the seventh hundred and the rise of the Ottoman empire in the thirteenth, the inclusion of of the like kind blatantly Turkish emblems within the painting clearly links the ruthles manslaughter of Ursula and her companions, including the [i]pontifex maximus[/i] just behind her, with the violence and death brought by dint of the Ottoman Turks to Italy's doorstep. While a specific association remains impossible to make, in 1480 a certain quantity of eight hundred Christian inhabitants of Otranto were slaughtered through Turkish troops after a sanguinary battle in which many inhabitants of the city died. (8) Despite the death of Mehm II in 1481 the memory of his deadly masterys usurpation of Venetian trading colonies, and damage to Venice's trade network in the Mediterranean would have continued after his death. And the threat of the Ottoman mahometans to Venice's Levantine trade persisted after the death of Mehm II with his successor Bayezid II (reigned 1481-1512)

Besides including Islamic signs and weapons to create iconographical links to the Islamic world, and specifically to the Ottoman empire, Carpaccio also included Islamic facts because of their intrinsic beauty, value, and exoticism. An elegant example of like an Islamic artifact is the metal bucket hanging upon the wall next to the sleeping saint in the Dream of St Ursula, dated 1495 (Fig. 2) (9) This bucket with its pronounced circular and disproportionately squat profile, bears little resemblance to Italian examples of the period. The unusual outline oF Carpaccio's brass bucket and the fortunate preservation of small Islamic bucket have l scholars to relate this bucket to pieces existing in the Museo cottager in Venice and in the Museo Diocesano of Treviso, which date from the fourteenth hundred and come from Mamluk Syria or Egypt (Fig. 3) (10) However, the pan portrayed by Carpaccio is shorter, the belly is rounder and a thin horizontal strip echoing the individual circling the neck appears to be subservient to as the foot.