Two Odalisques Playing Mancala in the Harem

As part of a series of a total of 43 ‘turqueries’, these Paintings were supposed to intimate a sense of the Oriental harem. In each, four women spend their time smoking and playing board games or music: in a spacious room, that does, however, have bars over the windows. The background to the images was a commission issued by Johann Matthias Reichsgraf von der Schulenburg in 1742-3, who had in 1716 in the service of Venice successfully defended Corfu against the Turks. The Guardi brothers and their studio took their cue from the engravings of the Recueil Ferriol, which arose in 1714 after Paintings by Jean- Baptiste van Mour. The latter had worked in Constantinople. The Guardis were particularly interested in the authentic representation of the ornamentation and costumes. The artifice of the curtain creates a voyeuristic effect that visually emphasizes the ambivalent interest in things foreign. Some 30 works from the series have survived and are in public or private collections. (Kathrin DuBois)