CARLO BOSSOLI | THE KHAN'S PALACE IN BAKHCHISARAI, CRIMEA

Sale: Dorotheum, Vienna, 17 April 2012, lot 85

Purchased at the above sale by the present owner

Dating from the sixteenth century, the Bakhchisarai Palace was built as the main residence of the Crimean Khans. It consisted in nine inner courtyards and seventeen buildings, including two mosques and both private and official residences. 

Of Italian and Swiss descent, Bossoli spent most of his youth in Odessa, where his family had settled in 1820. Displaying a precocious talent for topographical drawing already in his early twenties, Bossoli earned the patronage of Viceroy Count Vorontsov, who sponsored his travels to Rome and Naples in 1839. Upon his return home, Bossoli was invited to stay at the Vorontsov Palace in Alupka where he worked on a series of Crimean views, some of which were published as an album of lithographs in Odessa and London in 1842 and 1853 respectively. At least another two birds-eye views of this subject by the artist are known.