One of the richest pleasures in life is to stand at the foot of the Galata Bridge in Istanbul and behold on the opposite shore three of the world`s most dazzling imperial monuments.
They come into view all at once in a splendid panorama. At left are the gardens and pavilions of Topkapi Sarayi, the great palace of the Ottoman sultans. At right is the Suleymaniye, the city`s most magnificent mosque complex. In between is Haghia Sophia, one of the seven wonders of the medieval world and the center of religious life in the Byzantine Empire.
Much of the history of the last 1,600 years is embedded in these buildings; indeed, they are landmarks of Turkey`s cultural heritage. So to understand something of the relationship between them is to come closer to the grace and beauty of more portable treasures, specifically those in ”The Age of Sultan Suleyman the Magnificent,” the exhibition that opened Saturday at the Art Institute.
Suleyman reigned for 46 years, from 1520 to 66, during which the Ottoman dynasty reached its political, economic and artistic height. For architecture, bookmaking, ceramics, metalwork and weaving, the age of Suleyman was thus a
”golden age.” Our task is to discover how it became so.
The Turks originally were a nomadic group of tribes living in what is now Siberia. They moved westward in the second half of the 8th Century, establishing independent states in Afghanistan, eastern Iran and northern India. In the 11th Century, the Seljuk Turks–named for a warrior leader of one of the tribes–moved further into Islam, dominating Iran, Iraq and Syria while also expanding into Anatolia. Seljuk rule continued until the beginning of the 14th Century, when the region was divided into a number of Turkish emirates.
The leader of the emirate in the northwest corner of Anatolia was Osman, founder of the Osmanli, or Ottoman, dynasty. Rule passed from father to son during the next century as the emirate developed into an empire stretching from the Danube to the Euphrates. This is the territory Mehmed II inherited.
Mehmed is the sultan known as the Conqueror for having brought about the fall of Constantinople, capital of the Byzantine Empire and the most fabled city on earth. This was the city that Constantine the Great had laid out himself as the New Rome. For more than a thousand years it was not only a place of unparalleled beauty, learning and riches. It also was a symbol of all that was surpassing in human history.
Mehmed breached the walls of Constantinople on May 29, 1453, fully aware that he now was heir and possessor of the gem of the ancient world. He also knew that Islamic tradition prescribed three days of unrestricted pillage for any city taken by storm, and so turned his soldiers loose. But nearing the end of the first day Mehmed rode through the city to Haghia Sophia, which he immediately saved from destruction by declaring a mosque. Then he went to the Sacred Palace, and was so shaken by its ruin that he eulogized it with a couplet by the Persian poet Saadi.
Several churches, including the second in importance, the Church of the Holy Apostles, emerged from the invasion still in Christian hands, apparently untouched. This became a source of puzzlement to later sultans. Suleyman was among those who considered the issue–and decided to leave the churches in peace. It was his way to build upon sound early decisions.
For his part, finding that all the Byzantine palaces were uninhabitable, Mehmed erected his own on the third of the city`s seven hills. But only a few years later, in 1459, he chose another site, again more cognizant of history. This was at the northern end of the first hill, on the acropolis of Byzantium, the original colony established in 667 B.C. Here he once more exerted dominion over the past by creating Topkapi Sarayi on the very spot advised by the Delphic oracle.
This new, almost cumulative power of the sultan showed itself with munificence in the architecture he commissioned: no longer lone, scattered structures but large complexes including a central mosque and its charitable, educational and pious buildings. Hagia Sophia became a model for the mosques, as much for its association with Ottoman triumph as its miraculous architectural achievement. Each builder attempted to re-create and surpass it but not until the age of Suleyman was there one who finally succeeded.
The sultan`s patronage also was reflected in the other arts, for Mehmed established an imperial studio to create designs that would be used by artisans who worked in books as well as with ceramics, tiles, wood, stone, metal and textiles. The institution included schools that accepted both native and foreign-born artists, educating them to assist more established artists and finally to achieve the highest mastery themselves. This, too, Suleyman inherited.
Like his great-grandfather Mehmed, Suleyman was at once a warrior and lawgiver. But to these talents–which enlarged the empire to its farthest point and generated models for the legal codes of many countries including America–he added a singular capacity for love, becoming one of the few sultans to officially take a wife.
It was she, Haseki Hurrem Sultan, who commissioned the first of nearly 120 buildings in Istanbul by Sinan, the greatest architect in Turkish history. Born to Greek parents, this master engaged in a lifelong struggle to create a dome higher and wider than that of Hagia Sophia, succeeding only after Suleyman had died and his heir commissioned the Selimiye mosque in Edirne, an earlier capital of the empire. Yet Sinan`s greatest work in Istanbul was still an imperial commission, the vast Suleymaniye complex, whose more than 200 domes seem to cascade from the site where Mehmed built his first palace. (Part of the complex is seen in the background of the famous portrait of Suleyman by Melchior Lorichs.)
If architecture was the supreme achievement of the Ottomans, their manuscripts–many of which are featured in the exhibition–nonetheless went through a development of some importance. For the works of the imperial studio gradually moved away from an eclectic style with Persian elements to a uniquely Turkish genre depicting contemporary figures in actual settings. The Suleymanname, an illustrated history of the life of Sultan Suleyman, is one of the masterworks that initiated the genre.
Along with this realistic style were three other decorative traditions. The first was conservative, showing delicate arches, medallions and varieties of scrolls. The second, which came to be the high court style known as saz, was mystical and fantastic, having leaves that violently curl back on and sometimes pierce themselves. The third, more naturalistic, depicts spring flowers and trees in a joyful re-creation of paradise gardens.
Each of these three traditions were employed not only in imperial monograms and drawings but also on many of the ceramics, tiles, textiles and metalwork included in the show. Thus, at times, the small portable pieces can give an idea of the decoration of some of the most beautiful Istanbul mosques, such as Sinan`s Rustem Pasa, or even the Topkapi palace itself.
Interestingly, the palace–now the museum that lent most of the pieces on view–did not have quarters for the sultan`s harem until after the reign of Suleyman. Mehmed apparently kept his wives and concubines in the first of his two palaces, whereas Suleyman allowed his wife into Topkapi`s gardens, but she dwelt in a wooden pavilion. It often has been said that the decline of the empire began when later sultans stopped leading their troops in the field, preferring to languish at Topkapi with their women. Whatever the case, the palace in Suleyman`s time was perhaps more a monument of civil architecture than the most sybaritic of homes.
Not that it wasn`t splendid. Suleyman was trained as a goldsmith, and the sophistication of craft he elsewhere supported likewise went into objects for everyday use. Furniture, clothing, rugs, even weapons were created with an eye for fine decorative pattern and a sumptuousness that became as legendary as the number of saints represented by relics in the court of the Byzantine emperor.
That such sumptuousness may look to us more worldly than divine was perhaps inevitable, though the catalogue by Esin Atil (Abrams, $45 hardcover, $29.50 paperbound) nicely outlines the various obeisances to Islam. In any event, for the first time in more than 20 years, the West is having an opportunity to examine 210 objects from the single greatest repository in Turkey, and if that still does not compare with the view across Galata Bridge, it will most beautifully, most eminently do.
Made possible by Philip Morris Companies, Inc., ”The Age of Sultan Suleyman the Magnificent” will continue in the Morton Wing of the Art Institute through Sept. 6. Subsidiary exhibitions on Ottoman architecture and interiors will be, respectively, at the Chicago Architecture Foundation, 330 S. Dearborn St. (June 22-Sept. 5) and the David and Alfred Smart Gallery, 5550 S. Greenwood Ave. (June 21-Aug. 16).
