Musical gathering, Turkey, 1700, Opaque watercolour, paper, 38,2 x 24,8 cm.
This colourful ensemble of musicians and entertainers illustrates the royal taste for music and dance in the Ottoman world, an interest shared with other Islamic and European courts. While single-page paintings had been introduced to the artist’s repertoire over a century before, the formation of the figures and the fact that they appear to direct their performance to an audience at their right suggests that this image formed one half of a double-page manuscript painting. Falling in line with earlier princely images depicted in Persian illustrated manuscripts, the audience would probably have consisted of a king and his attendants or courtly lovers enjoying a musical interlude in the country (Welch and Welch 1982, p. 42). Three women stand next to the musicians, dressed in peach- and crimson-coloured robes, while a fourth sits on her knees to play the ektar, a one-stringed lute. Meanwhile, a young boy sits to the left of the lute player and taps his tambourine to the music. The painting, once mounted on an album, retains part of a margin that was decorated in gold vegetal scrolls. Photo: The Aga Khan Museum. Learn more.
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