Nearly forgotten but glorious art, envisionings and historical oddments from the back corners of the internet
Bits and pieces of the Levant and Eastern Europe back when the Ottomans ran it. Imagery from Luigi Mayer’s “Interesting views in Turkey : selected from the original drawings, taken for Sir Robert Ainslie.” Published in 1819 in London. Sir Robert Ainslie was a diplomat stationed in Constantinople, the British ambassador to the Porte from 1776 to 1794.
Ciala Kavak. Page 34 of Luigi Mayer’s Interesting Views in Turkey, selected from the original drawings, taken for Sir Robert Ainslie. Printed in London in 1819 by Robert Bowyer by Bensley and Son, Bolt Court, Fleet Street. Collections of the George Washington University Libraries. via the Internet Archive https://archive.org/details/39020024846001-interestingview/page/n34/mode/1up
Piccolo Bent. Page 48 of Luigi Mayer’s Interesting Views in Turkey, selected from the original drawings, taken for Sir Robert Ainslie. Printed in London in 1819 by Robert Bowyer by Bensley and Son, Bolt Court, Fleet Street. Collections of the George Washington University Libraries. via the Internet Archive https://archive.org/details/39020024846001-interestingview/page/n47/mode/1up
Kaskerat. Page 65 of Luigi Mayer’s Interesting Views in Turkey, selected from the original drawings, taken for Sir Robert Ainslie. Printed in London in 1819 by Robert Bowyer by Bensley and Son, Bolt Court, Fleet Street. Collections of the George Washington University Libraries. via the Internet Archive https://archive.org/details/39020024846001-interestingview/page/n65/mode/1upMosque in Latachia. Page 83 of Luigi Mayer’s Interesting Views in Turkey, selected from the original drawings, taken for Sir Robert Ainslie. Printed in London in 1819 by Robert Bowyer by Bensley and Son, Bolt Court, Fleet Street. Collections of the George Washington University Libraries. via the Internet Archive https://archive.org/details/39020024846001-interestingview/page/n83/mode/1up
Luigi Mayer did other illustrated books about places in the Ottoman Empire including one with plates of places in Palestine which I have blogged about here before. Just search on “Luigi Mayer” and it’ll pull them up. Mayer was a German artist. There were of course many very talented Ottoman artists but most of their work was for the Ottoman market not the Western one Mayer’s work was aimed at.
On a voyage to see how much mileage I can get from the creative ability and eye for images that my family thought was useless. On line art curator, fiction writer and now blogger. Historian's daughter. Follow me . . .even I have no idea where I'm going next.
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