In his painting, which was created at a time when the Ottoman Empire was considered a threat, Andrea Celesti expressed orientalised notions of historical figures and their clothing. In the triumphal procession of the victorious Turco-Mongol commander Tamerlane, we see warriors, Janissaries with keçe on their heads, warriors in training (Acemi Oğlan) with pointed hats, Black musicians and enslaved and captured warriors of the defeated Ottoman Sultan Bayazet with turbans as headgear.6 The painting emphasises the half-naked female figure, the wife of the prisoner, as well as the undignified and degrading depiction of Bayazet in the cage.7 The depiction of the rulers Tamerlane and Bayazet was intended to create a negative image of ‘Oriental’ rulers for the European public.8 Frederick II, who described Tamerlane ‘as a passion-driven ruler of a barbaric and violent people’ and Bayazet as ‘an uncontrolled prisoner’, also held this view.9 The brutality of the ‘Oriental’ ruler was contrasted with the supposed neutrality and balance of the ancient and—as its successor—the European legal order. Negative images of ‘Oriental’ rulers Detail from fig. 1 Tamerlane and Zelida
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