Beschreibung:

TURKISH TULIP ALBUM An album of original drawings of tulips [Istanbul: circa 1725]. Quarto (309 x 217 mm.), 37 leaves with 49 original watercolour and bodycolour drawings, SHOWING 42 NOW EXTINCT VARIETIES OF TULIPS, and five other flowers, most with a single bloom and one leaf, inscribed in ink with the name of the variety in various tal'iq , naskhi or nesta'liq hands, the artist's signature or initial on 5 leaves, most leaves numbered in a single Arabic hand. Various paper stocks: 24 of the drawings recto and verso of 12 laminated leaves; 3 on tinted papers; 2 on heavily oxidised sheets. The first four drawings mounted within elaborate ruled, gilded and marbled borders (the first of these depicts an orange tulip in a spray including a rose and a marigold); two drawings with double gilt and ink-ruled borders; one mounted within a double gilt and ink-ruled border, the single tulip flower against a background of stylised foliage, flowers and birds in gilt; six with no borders (five of tulips, one of these unfinished, and one of a narcissus and a cyclamen on a single sheet); 36 others within a simple ruled and gilt border. (Some borders shaved affecting the numeration and/or the decorative borders, some old light dampstaining.) Contemporary brown goatskin, covers with outer simple triple fillet border in gilt and blind with central deeply impressed gilt floral medallion, with some detailing in gilt added by hand, dark brown goatskin liners, blind-stamped with central floral medallion (rebacked, some old dampstaining to covers, resewn through later guards, stitching weak). Provenance : Ekrem Hakki Ayverdi; Pierre Berès; Robert de Belder. A UNIQUE PICTORIAL RECORD OF FORTY-TWO VARIETIES OF THE EXQUISITE AND NOW LONG-VANISHED ISTANBUL TULIP, THE CULTIVATION OF WHICH REACHED ITS CLIMAX DURING THE YEARS KNOWN AS THE TULIP PERIOD, THE 'LâLE DEVRI' OF SULTAN AHMET III (1703-1730). The distinctive almond-shaped Istanbul tulip, seen as the symbol of the Ottoman court and beloved of artists and poets, was cultivated with extraordinary passion among wealthy Ottoman dignitaries in the first three decades of the 18th-century, and especially the twelve years from the Treaty of Passarowitz in 1718 to the deposition of Ahmet III in 1730, from which the De Belder album dates. At one time as many as fifteen hundred of these distinctive varieties were recorded and bulbs are said to have changed hands for as much as 1,000 Turkish gold lira . But by the end of the century the Istanbul tulip with its six slender, delicately tapering petals, had vanished for ever. A favourite decorative motif, it is shown in Ottoman tiles, in brocaded silks and in miniatures, but in a stylised form. The drawings of the artist signing himself 'Mehmed Bendegân' (Mehmed, one of the ruler's servants) depict the most sought-after tulips of his day in a uniquely lively and naturalistic style. His flowers, delicately shaded in pink, red, mauve, orange, yellow or cream, conform to the criteria required of the tulip in the Mizan'1 Ezhar (The Habit of Flowers), the authoritative treatise on the subject of the cultivation of flowers written in 1703 by eyh Mehmed Lâlezari. No other pictorial record of so many varieties of the Istanbul tulip is known to have survived. The fall of Ahmet III in 1730 marked the end of the years of pleasurable entertainments, of the tulip festivals, illuminations and fireworks, and of the fragile pavilions and pleasure domes that characterised his reign. From the 1750s the Istanbul tulip began to disappear and by the end of the century its beguiling form was no longer to be seen in the gardens of the Ottoman capital. The De Belder tulip album is a unique record of this beautiful flower at the pinnacle of its cultivation in 18th-century Istanbul. From the 16th century, the Turkish love of flowers was much remarked upon by European travellers who marvelled at the gardens of Istanbul, where the Sultan himself by 1561 owned no fewer than sixty-one gard