VENETIAN SCHOOL, 17TH CENTURY

The ‘Rossa Imperiatrix Turcarum’ medallion in the top-left corner, identifies the subject of our portrait as Hurrem Sultan, the wife of Sulayman the Magnificent (1494-1566). ‘Rossa’ alludes to her European heritage, as she was taken from her native Ruthenia at childhood and later presented to Sulayman as a slave concubine. She eventually became Haseki Sultan, chief consort and Sulayman’s favourite, who broke tradition by freeing and then marrying her as his Empress. Although gossip among both the Ottomans and Europeans asserted that she had bewitched the Sultan, her influence over him established her as one of the most powerful women of her age. Indeed, she was most notoriously known for her complicity in a plot that promoted her own son at the expense of Sulayman’s oldest, a son by another concubine.

The legend of ‘La Sultana Rossa’ or Roxelana, as she is better known in the West, and the harem which she was part of, enjoyed widespread attention in Europe. The fascination with the harem, commonly referred to as the Seraglio by European writers, was largely due to its inaccessibility, making any descriptions of the harem largely an exercise in fantasy. This portrait depicts Roxelana in the Venetian tradition, with the Renaissance ideals of beauty: pale white skin, full lips, and thin eyebrows. The layered, elaborate costume and turban-like headdress, however, distinctly identify her as ‘oriental’. It is interesting to note that her lavish overcoat evokes the rich trade of luxury textiles and velvets that were traded between the Ottoman courts and Venetian merchants at this time. Portraits of ‘La Sultana Rossa’ were largely disseminated by Italian and Northern European artists, dating to the 1530s and 1540s: for example a woodcut portrait by Sebald Beham and an anonymous work published by Matteo Pagani (H. Madar, 'Before the Odalisque: Renaissance Representations of Elite Ottoman Women', Early Modern Women, vol. 6, 2011, pp.12-13). The headdresses in these prints, much like in this painting, are largely imaginative and are likely to have been an attempt to feminise the Ottoman turban. The elaborate jewel at the front of Hurrem Sultan’s headdress, however, is possibly an aigrette, a type of ornament worn by women of the harem that could be put on headgear. This painting, is one of a number of imagined portraits of sultanas that began to appear in the mid-sixteenth century, showing women of the harem as individuals of wealth and political status, although from an imagined and somewhat idealised Western perspective (Madar, op.cit, p.10.)

Other versions of the paintings of Roxelana and her daughter Mihrimah Sultan, also known as Cameria (1522-1578), are found at the Pera Museum, Istanbul (inv.no.102) and Lacock Abbey, Wiltshire (inv.no.996348). Similar paintings were sold in these rooms, 31 March 2022, lot 118 and Sotheby’s London, 27 October 2021, lot 168 whilst a full body portrait was sold by Sotheby’s London, 10 June 2020, lot 216.