Turk's head

Wenceslaus (or Wenzel) Hollar (1607-77) was an Anglo-Czech artist, and one of the greatest and most prolific printmakers of the 17th century. His art  reveals his immensely wide subject range, and reflects the priorities of his time: religion, mythology, satire, landscapes, geography and maps, portraits, women, costumes, sports, natural history, architecture, heraldry, numismatics, ornaments, title-pages and initials. 

Between 1636 and 1644 Hollar was employed as an artist and cataloguer in the household of Thomas Howard, 21st Earl of Arundel, one of the greatest art collectors of his era. The Earl, a victim of the English Civil War, fled overseas and died in 1646; Hollar himself moved with his family to Antwerp in 1644. The return of political stability led to Hollar's own return to London in 1652, where he lived and worked until his death.

Hollar's curiosity in depicting whoever and whatever he encountered extended to people of all nations. In his oeuvre, there are therefore depictions of Africans, American Indians, Chinese, and here a solemn, wealthy and well-dressed middle aged Turk, presumably a merchant, with an immaculate moustache. Although Hollar executed the portrait from life in London in 1637, as the inscription indicates, he only made it into a print in Antwerp eight years later.

See:

http://blog.tepapa.govt.nz/tag/wenceslaus-hollar/

Richard Pennington, <em>A Descriptive Catalogue of the Etched Work of Wenceslaus Hollar 1607-1677</em> (Cambridge, 1982), p. 317 (no. 2010).

Dr Mark Stocker   Curator, Historical International Art    June 2017