lessons to be learned from contact with the wider world. There were also an increasing number of
European Orientalist scholars interested in anthropological enquiry, including comparative religion,
Richard Payne Knight being among their number.
It was common, however, for Orientalist paintings to be infused by the “exotic” (a term not used in the
eighteenth century itself), a voyeuristic fantasy of the east that often removed “Oriental” subjects from
specific historical, cultural or geographical contexts, inscribing them instead with an “acultural
illegibility” that enabled vicarious forms of pleasure (Guest, 1992, 102–104). Western artists specialized
in ethnographic, documentary or fantasy images of the east depending on their accustomed styles of
painting. Most of their representations remained figurative, even though much art from the east itself,
particularly from Islamic cultures, was nonfigurative: the style or manner of painting of western artists
was not affected to any significant degree by the sights they had witnessed or imagined. The Ottoman
Empire had inspired from the seventeenth century both fear and wonder and was mediated in the
eighteenth century through western interests not just in the ethnographic but also in the decorative and the
beautiful. As has already been seen with chinoisierie, some western styles such as the rococo were
thought to provide a suitable stylistic language for Orientalist subjects.
Documentary interests could easily spill over into a celebration of the “exotic.” In 1748 Vien organized at
the French Academy in Rome an “exotic” carnival of Muslim culture and costumes based on a
documentary series of costume studies, and held in honor of the visit to the Academy by Dominique,
Cardinal de la Rochefoucauld (1712–1800) (Bindman, Boucher and Weston, 2011b, 86–89). Orientalist
subjects were easily subsumed within the western imaginary. The vogue for Orientalism peaked in the
first half of the eighteenth century and reemerged in the 1780s. Europeans commissioned portraits of
themselves in Turkish dress in order to explore new, fantasy identities (Lemaire, 2013, 58, 109–111)
(Figure 5.7). Venetian artists, including Francesco Lazzaro Guardi (1712–1793), popularized the “Turkish
look” (Lemaire, 2013, 54–66). At the French court, Mme de Pompadour, Mlle de Clermont (full name
LouiseMarieAnne de BourbonCondé, 1673–1743) and Marie Antoinette were among those
represented in portraits as a Turkish Sultana, sometimes to mark lavish court receptions in honor of
visiting Persian and Turkish dignitaries.