A FRAGMENT OF A SCROLL, PROBABLY DEPICTING A PROCESSION OF SULTAN MURAD III WITH INFANTRYMEN & ARCHERS, CONTINENTAL SCHOOL, POSSIBLY AUSTRIAN, CIRCA 1600 |

watercolour, tempera and traces of gilding on vellum, with a later (eighteenth-century) inscription in French, faded and illegible but appearing to refer to the soldiers

Couleurs d'Orient, Brussels 2010.
Turkophilia, Paris 2011.

F. Hitzel et al. Couleurs d'Orient, Arts et arts de vivre dans l'Empire Ottoman, exhibition catalogue, Brussels 2010, p.13.
F. Hitzel et al. Turkophilia Revealed, exhibition catalogue, Paris 2011, p.81.

Unexamined out of frame and under glass. There are some old repairs to the vellum at the extreme left and right edges, including in thin strips in the hoof and rear of the horse, and the ink inscriptions have faded with age. There is paint flaking in some of the pigments, notably in the vertical red stripes in the tunics worn by some of the peyk soldiers, and the black outlines in the headgear appear to have been strengthened. There is a vertical line c. 20cm from the right edge, which appears to have been retouched. The catalogue illustration is broadly accurate and the above is visible in the illustration. Held in a decorative dark gold-painted wood and plaster frame, under glass with a green mount.
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The present work depicts two classes of Janissary soldiers, respectively peyk bodyguard infantrymen wielding their balta axes, and solak, denoting 'left-handed' in Turkish, wielding bows. Key components of the Sultan’s escort, it is likely the Sultan himself would have been represented on horseback to the right of the archers, who would commonly march beside their liege.
 
The fragment bears close similarity to manuscript albums of the late sixteenth century, commissioned by European courts from their ambassadors, notably those executed during the reign of Sultan Murad III (see, for example, those held in the Staats und Universitätsbibliothek, Bremen, the Codrington Library of All Souls College, Oxford, and particularly the Codex Vindobonensis 8626, Bartholomeus Pezzen's album, in which the placement of the peykler is particularly similar to the present work). For a further example of the peyk bodyguards wielding balta in procession, see the exhibition catalogue War and Peace, Ottoman-Polish Relationships in the 15^th-19^th centuries (Kangal, Selmin, Turkish Republic Ministry of Culture, Istanbul 1999, pp.302, no.198 now in the Warsaw University Library T. 171, no.165). For a further illustration of traditional Janissary garb see Kangal, Selmin, for War and Peace, Ottoman-Polish Relationships in the 15^th-19^th centuries, Republic Ministry of Culture, Istanbul, 1999, pp.289-291, no.178-181.

We are grateful to Selen Etingu and Surbahan Nurdan for their assistance in cataloguing this work.