Man in Ottoman dress

Jožef Tominc trained as an artist in Rome but spent much of his life working in the north Italian region of his birthplace, Gorizia and Trieste (then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire) where he was the leading portrait painter in the Neoclassical and Biedermeier traditions. This portrait of an unknown sitter in Ottoman attire was painted in Trieste, the key trading seaport of the Habsburg monarchy. To encourage profitable commerce, traders from around the world - in particular the Ottoman Empire - were actively encouraged to settle in this liberal free port on the Adriatic Sea, with the result being a multicultural city of unparalleled richness. The sitter’s black turban may indicate that he was not Muslim, but part of one of the several Arabic speaking Christian communities based in Trieste.

The precise meaning of this engaging portrait remains elusive. Some experts interpret its exquisite details of turban and accessories as a form of Orientalist fancy dress, made fashionable in the Romantic period, by artists like Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres and William Beechey. It has also been suggested that it represents a high-ranking official of the Ottoman Court. A third theory is that the painting served a contractual function, or documented a stage in a marriage negotiation, based on the Arabic inscription in the letter, which translated reads: For your dowry: To the honoured Nicola al-Habib the jewel(s), for my respected uncle in Trieste.

Text by Sophie Matthiesson © National Gallery of Victoria, Australia