A seated Oriental

Like many of his European contemporaries, Schulenburg was fascinated with the exotic costume, manners and customs of the Ottoman Empire. To this fashionable fascination Schulenburg may have added a genuine interest in the people from whom he was paid to defend the territories of Venice. The Schulenburg inventories bear numerous references to pictures of Turkish subjects, many described generically as 'quadri turchi'. In the years 1742 and 1743 Guardi delivered no less than 43 such 'quadri turchi' developed from engravings after Jean-Baptiste Vanmour (for which see the catalogue of the exhibition, Guardi: Quadri Turcheschi, at the Fondazione Giorgio Cini, Venice, 28 August to 21 November 1993, nos. 1-3 and 5-38). The pose and costume of the seated figure in the present picture seems to be related to that of the Sultan in The Sultan's Supper from that series (private collection, no. 15 in the Fondazione Giorgio Cini exhibition).