Turkish Rococo

The Turkish Rococo is the last creative epoch of art development in the Ottoman Empire .

The prelude is the so-called tulip time (Turkish: lâle devri ) from 1718 to 1730 under Sultan Ahmed III. , which derived its name from the preference for the representation of the tulip. However, the art of the tulip era remained more of a kind of court style.

The roots of the Turkish Rococo can be found among other things in the so-called quatre-fleurs style (after 4 common types of flowers). The influences from the European baroque and rococo are characteristic of the decor. The increasingly intensive political and economic relations between the Ottoman Empire and European countries are an important reason for this phenomenon. In addition, the Persian influence in classical Ottoman art with a similar tendency to emphasize details and playful musing in the ornamentation had long paved the way for the inclusion of the rococomotive.

The Turkish Rococo soon reached the provinces of the empire, for example in the form of the interior decorations of Damascus houses (sṭambūlī) .

The designation of this epoch as decadent and as a phase of decline is hardly shared by art historians today.

See also

• Ottoman baroque

literature

• Tulip time . In: Lexicon of Art. Volume 7. Leipzig 1994. pp. 446f.
• J. Carswell: From the tulip to the rose. In: T. Naff, R. Owen (Eds.): Studies in 18th century Islamic history. Carbondale, Edwardsville 1977.
• Ali Uzay Peker: Western Influences on the Ottoman Empire and Occidentalism in the Architecture of Istanbul . In: Eighteenth-Century Life , 26.3 (2002), pp. 139-163

Web links

• Article about the Damascus Room in the Dresden Japanese Palace at Monumente Online

swell

1. ↑ cf. the Damascus Room of the former Herbert M. Gutmann collection