Antoine Ignace Melling
Encyclopedia
Veduta
A veduta is a highly detailed, usually large-scale painting of a cityscape or some other vista....
of Constantinople
Constantinople
Constantinople was the capital of the Roman, Eastern Roman, Byzantine, Latin, and Ottoman Empires. Throughout most of the Middle Ages, Constantinople was Europe's largest and wealthiest city.-Names:...
, a town where he lived for 18 years. He was imperial architect to Sultan Selim III
Selim III
Selim III was the reform-minded Sultan of the Ottoman Empire from 1789 to 1807. The Janissaries eventually deposed and imprisoned him, and placed his cousin Mustafa on the throne as Mustafa IV...
and Hatice Sultan
Hatice Sultan (1766-1821)
Aliyyetü Devletlu ismetlu Hatice Sultan , was an Ottoman princess, daughter of Mustafa III and sister of Selim III. She was married in 1787 to Hotin Nakîb-mc-es-Sayyid Ahmed Pasha....
and later landscape painter to the Empress Josephine
Joséphine de Beauharnais
Joséphine de Beauharnais was the first wife of Napoléon Bonaparte, and thus the first Empress of the French. Her first husband Alexandre de Beauharnais had been guillotined during the Reign of Terror, and she had been imprisoned in the Carmes prison until her release five days after Alexandre's...
of France. His most influential work is published as Voyage pittoresque de Constantinople et des rives du Bosphore.
Melling's two given names are often written in hyphenated form as Antoine-Ignace.
Biography
Antoine Ignace (Anton Ignaz) Melling was born in KarlsruheKarlsruhe
The City of Karlsruhe is a city in the southwest of Germany, in the state of Baden-Württemberg, located near the French-German border.Karlsruhe was founded in 1715 as Karlsruhe Palace, when Germany was a series of principalities and city states...
in 1763. After the death of his sculptor father, Antoine lived with his painter uncle in Strassbourg (Alsace
Alsace
Alsace is the fifth-smallest of the 27 regions of France in land area , and the smallest in metropolitan France. It is also the seventh-most densely populated region in France and third most densely populated region in metropolitan France, with ca. 220 inhabitants per km²...
). As a young man he visited his older brother, and studied Architecture and Mathematics at Klagenfurt
Klagenfurt
-Name:Carinthia's eminent linguists Primus Lessiak and Eberhard Kranzmayer assumed that the city's name, which literally translates as "ford of lament" or "ford of complaints", had something to do with the superstitious thought that fateful fairies or demons tend to live around treacherous waters...
. At the age of 19, he went to Italy
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
, Egypt
Egypt
Egypt , officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, Arabic: , is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Southwest Asia. Egypt is thus a transcontinental country, and a major power in Africa, the Mediterranean Basin, the Middle East and the Muslim world...
, and finally Constantinople
Constantinople
Constantinople was the capital of the Roman, Eastern Roman, Byzantine, Latin, and Ottoman Empires. Throughout most of the Middle Ages, Constantinople was Europe's largest and wealthiest city.-Names:...
as a member of the Russia
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
n Ambassador's retinue and household with the aim of drawing pictures for various dignitaries. He was introduced to princess Hatice Sultan
Hatice Sultan (1766-1821)
Aliyyetü Devletlu ismetlu Hatice Sultan , was an Ottoman princess, daughter of Mustafa III and sister of Selim III. She was married in 1787 to Hotin Nakîb-mc-es-Sayyid Ahmed Pasha....
, sister and confidant of the Ottoman
Ottoman Empire
The Ottoman EmpireIt was usually referred to as the "Ottoman Empire", the "Turkish Empire", the "Ottoman Caliphate" or more commonly "Turkey" by its contemporaries...
Sultan
Sultan
Sultan is a title with several historical meanings. Originally, it was an Arabic language abstract noun meaning "strength", "authority", "rulership", and "dictatorship", derived from the masdar سلطة , meaning "authority" or "power". Later, it came to be used as the title of certain rulers who...
Selim III
Selim III
Selim III was the reform-minded Sultan of the Ottoman Empire from 1789 to 1807. The Janissaries eventually deposed and imprisoned him, and placed his cousin Mustafa on the throne as Mustafa IV...
.
At Hatice Sultan's suggestion, Melling was employed as Imperial Architect by Selim III. In 1795 the princess commissioned Melling to design a labyrinth
Labyrinth
In Greek mythology, the Labyrinth was an elaborate structure designed and built by the legendary artificer Daedalus for King Minos of Crete at Knossos...
for her palace at Ortaköy
Ortaköy
Ortaköy is a neighbourhood, formerly a small village, within the Beşiktaş district of Istanbul, Turkey, located in the middle of the European bank of the Bosphorus....
in the style of the Danish ambassador Baron Hübsch's garden. Delighted with the result, she asked Melling to redecorate the palace interior, and subsequently, a completely new neoclassical palace at Defterdarburnu. He also designed clothes and jewellery
Jewellery
Jewellery or jewelry is a form of personal adornment, such as brooches, rings, necklaces, earrings, and bracelets.With some exceptions, such as medical alert bracelets or military dog tags, jewellery normally differs from other items of personal adornment in that it has no other purpose than to...
for her.
Melling Pasha's
Pasha
Pasha or pascha, formerly bashaw, was a high rank in the Ottoman Empire political system, typically granted to governors, generals and dignitaries. As an honorary title, Pasha, in one of its various ranks, is equivalent to the British title of Lord, and was also one of the highest titles in...
eighteen years as Imperial Architect gave him a privileged opportunity to observe the Ottoman Court. He became more familiar with the Ottoman palace than any Western artist since Gentile Bellini
Gentile Bellini
Gentile Bellini was an Italian painter. From 1474 he was the official portrait artist for the Doges of Venice.- Biography :...
. He made many detailed drawings of the Sultan's palaces, Ottoman society, and vedute
Veduta
A veduta is a highly detailed, usually large-scale painting of a cityscape or some other vista....
of Constantinople and its environs. He was rightly known as "the unrivalled painter of the Bosphorus". As stated in an anonymous travelogue written in about 1817, "Sometimes these pictures contain an excessive amount of detail in an endeavour to reflect the reality but they depict the modern buildings and landscapes of this city, every view of which is attractive, in a manner more successful than that achieved in the most sensitive written descriptions." He worked in a far more realistic manner than Matthäus Merian
Matthäus Merian
Matthäus Merian der Ältere was a Swiss-born engraver who worked in Frankfurt for most of his career, where he also ran a publishing house.-Early life and marriage:...
(1593–1650). Merian’s panorama engraving of Constantinople, published in 1653 and extensively reprinted, whilst claiming to represent the view of the city from the heights of Galata
Galata
Galata or Galatae is a neighbourhood in the Beyoğlu district on the European side of Istanbul, the largest city of Turkey. Galata is located at the northern shore of the Golden Horn, the inlet which separates it from the historic peninsula of old Constantinople. The Golden Horn is crossed by...
and Beyoğlu
Beyoglu
Beyoğlu is a district located on the European side of İstanbul, Turkey, separated from the old city by the Golden Horn...
, depicts Ottoman capital as a city consisting only of minarets.
Paris
He returned to ParisParis
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
in 1803, and published a prospectus for the Voyage pittoresque de Constantinople et des rives du Bosphor. With the help of Talleyrand Melling was appointed landscape painter to the Emperor Napoleon's
Napoleon I of France
Napoleon Bonaparte was a French military and political leader during the latter stages of the French Revolution.As Napoleon I, he was Emperor of the French from 1804 to 1815...
wife, the Empress Josephine
Joséphine de Beauharnais
Joséphine de Beauharnais was the first wife of Napoléon Bonaparte, and thus the first Empress of the French. Her first husband Alexandre de Beauharnais had been guillotined during the Reign of Terror, and she had been imprisoned in the Carmes prison until her release five days after Alexandre's...
. By 1809 he had set up an engraving studio for the purpose of reproducing completed images of his drawings. A series of facsimile
Facsimile
A facsimile is a copy or reproduction of an old book, manuscript, map, art print, or other item of historical value that is as true to the original source as possible. It differs from other forms of reproduction by attempting to replicate the source as accurately as possible in terms of scale,...
s were sent out to subscribers, between 1809 and 1819. Examples of etchings with engraving by Schroeder, Duplessi-Bertaux, and Pigeot after Melling, with later professional hand-colouring, include:
- Cérémonie d'une noce turque.
- Fontaine de Sari-Yéri, près Buyuk-Déré.
- Intérieur d'une partie du Harem du Grand-Seigneur.
- Kiâhd-Hané, Lieu de Plaisance du Grand-Seigneur.
- Prairie de Buyck-Déré; Sur la Rive Européenne du Bosphore, à quatre lieues de Constantinople.
- Vue de l'un des Bend, dans la forêt de Belgrade.
- Vue d'Aïnali-Kavak près de l'Arsenal, dans l'intérieur du port de Constantinople.
- Vue d'une partie de la Ville de Constantinople, avec la pointe du Sérail, Prise du Faubourg de Péra, Résidence des Ministres Etrangers.
- Vue de Hounkiar-Iskelesi, Echelle du Grand-Seigneur.
- Vue de Kara-Aghatch, au fond du port.
- Vue de l'embouchure de la mer Noire.
- Vue de l'Isle de Ténédos, dans l'Archipel.
- Vue de la grande Arcade de l'aqueduc de Baktché-Kieuï, et du vallon de Buyuk-Dèrè.
- Vue de la partie Orientale de Buyuk-Dèrè, Sur la Rive Européenne du Bosphore.
- Vue de la première cour de sérail.
- Vue de la Seconde Cour Intérieure du Sérail.
- Vue de la Ville de Scutari, prise à Péra.
- Vue du Champ des Morts, près de Péra.
- Vue du château des Sept-Tours, et de la ville de Constantinople, telle qu'elle se présente du côté de la mer de Marmara.
- Vue du grand Bend, dans la forêt de Belgrade.
- Vue du Village Tarapia, sur la rive européenne du Bosphore.
- Vue générale de Constantinople, prise du chemin de Buyuk-Déré.
Travels
His 1812 journey to the NetherlandsNetherlands
The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...
(under French rule at the time) is documented by Melling not only by a large number of surviving drawings but also by the letters sent to his family in Paris. The joys and inconveniences of that journey, which took him as far as the Hanseatic towns, are reported in a lively style, as are various aspects of Dutch life, the monuments and inhabitants of large cities, like Rotterdam
Rotterdam
Rotterdam is the second-largest city in the Netherlands and one of the largest ports in the world. Starting as a dam on the Rotte river, Rotterdam has grown into a major international commercial centre...
and Amsterdam
Amsterdam
Amsterdam is the largest city and the capital of the Netherlands. The current position of Amsterdam as capital city of the Kingdom of the Netherlands is governed by the constitution of August 24, 1815 and its successors. Amsterdam has a population of 783,364 within city limits, an urban population...
, and the "overwhelming appeal" of villages such as Broek in Waterland
Broek in Waterland
Broek in Waterland is a town in the Dutch province of North Holland with about 2350 inhabitants. It is a part of the municipality of Waterland, and is situated about 8 km south of Purmerend and 8 km northeast of Amsterdam. In the 17th and 18th century, the town was a popular residence for...
and the peaceful Sunday atmosphere of Zwolle
Zwolle
Zwolle is a municipality and the capital city of the province of Overijssel, Netherlands, 120 kilometers northeast of Amsterdam. Zwolle has about 120,000 citizens.-History:...
. The illustrated and annotated letters, preceded by an introduction – like a travel diary intended for a Voyage pittoresque – were never published. In 1815 he traveled with his daughter, drawing the capitals of all the French départements, and visited Britain in 1817.
After 1821, he was sent by the French Government to document the Pyrenees
Pyrenees
The Pyrenees is a range of mountains in southwest Europe that forms a natural border between France and Spain...
and demonstrate that their natural beauty rivalled that of the Alps
Alps
The Alps is one of the great mountain range systems of Europe, stretching from Austria and Slovenia in the east through Italy, Switzerland, Liechtenstein and Germany to France in the west....
. 72 fine aquatints, based on original sepia watercolours, were issued - together with text by Joseph Antoine Cervini
Joseph Antoine Cervini
Joseph Antoine Cervini was an author who provided the text for a book titled Voyage Pittoresque dans les Pyrénées Françaises et les Départements Adjacents, , Treuttel and Wurtz, Paris: 1826-30,...
- as: Voyage Pittoresque dans les Pyrénées Françaises et les Départements Adjacents, (Picturesque Travels in the French Pyrenees and the Adjacent Areas), Treuttel and Wurtz, Paris: 1826-30, (Bibliographie nationale Française, BnF, The French national Bibliography ISBN 2-911715-12-8). Examples of hand-coloured aquatints from this work include:
- Port de Vénasque
- Le Pont d'Espagne
- Le Lac de Gaube
- Vue prise de l'Hôtel Gassion à Pau
- Le Perthus et le Fort de Bellegarde
- Le Lac de Séculejo et ses Cascades
- Grotte du Mas-d'Azil
- Site de la Vallée d'Aure
- Ermitage de Saint-Antoine de Galamus
- Fontestorbes
Legacy
The Nobel PrizeNobel Prize
The Nobel Prizes are annual international awards bestowed by Scandinavian committees in recognition of cultural and scientific advances. The will of the Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, established the prizes in 1895...
-winning Turkish novelist, Orhan Pamuk
Orhan Pamuk
Ferit Orhan Pamuk , generally known simply as Orhan Pamuk, is a Turkish novelist. He is also the Robert Yik-Fong Tam Professor in the Humanities at Columbia University, where he teaches comparative literature and writing....
dedicates a whole chapter to Melling in his autobiographical memoir, Istanbul: Memories and the City. Pamuk claims that Melling saw the city like an Istanbullu but painted it like a cleareyed Westerner.
On the occasion of the 700th anniversary of the foundation of the Ottoman State, correspondence between Antoine Ignace Melling and Hatice Sultan, between 1763–1801; was reviewed in a paper by Fréderic Hitzel - at the 1999 International Congress on Learning and Education in the Ottoman World. The International Congress organised by IRCICA in cooperation with the Turkish Historical Society and the Turkish Society for History of Science, with the support of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Turkey. The congress took place under the patronage and in presence of the President of Turkey
President of Turkey
The President of Turkey is the head of state of the Republic of Turkey. The presidency is largely a ceremonial office but has some important functions...
. 175 scholars and researchers from 28 countries participated in it. The papers presented - subsequently revised by their authors - are published in three separate volumes: Arabic, (Vol. 1), English, (Vol. 2), and Turkish, (Vol. 3), respectively.
Melling is included in the Sabancı University
Sabanci University
Sabancı University is a private research institution located in Istanbul, Turkey. Founded in 1996. SU is a small and highly focused university with 2861 undergraduates and 624 graduates, maintaining a strong emphasis on social and natural sciences...
Faculty of Arts & Social Science course: Major Works of Ottoman Culture, (HUM 203). This course, "focuses on a selected few masterpieces of Ottoman artistic and literary production, picked on the basis of not only their high aesthetic qualities, but also their representativeness across different genres and historical periods".
The Ertuğ & Kocabıyık facsimile edition of the complete Voyage pittoresque de Constantinople et des rives du Bosphor was produced from the original "elephant folio", an unfolded first edition in the collection of Ahmet Ertuğ
Ahmet Ertuğ
Ahmet Ertuğ is a fine art photographer and publisher based in Istanbul, Turkey.He was trained as an architect at the Architectural Association School of Architecture in London. He specializes in large format photography of architectural and archaeological edifices of theHellenistic, Roman,...
. The technical aspects of the project were done under the supervision of Ertuğ in Switzerland by facsimile specialists. This facsimile edition was available in two different bindings. One is bound in Japanese cloth and the other is a very limited edition of only 50 copies bound in leather - intended for connoisseurs of fine books. The binding and decoration of all the leather-bound copies were done by hand. The book includes 48 views of Constantinople in the late 18th century and also three maps. The facsimile publishers also offered 25 copies of an edition of the unfolded image plates presented in a leather-bound case. The text for this edition is bound separately and presented in a pocket in the leather case. The descriptions of the views in the facsimile edition are in the original French, with an English translation.
Sources
- Antoine Ignace Melling, Lettres de Hollande et des villes anséatiques. La correspondance d'un artiste-voyageur avec sa famille à Paris en 1812. (Letters from Holland and the Hanseatic towns. Correspondence of an artist-traveller with his family in Paris in 1812). Presented and annotated by C. Boschma, Waanders, Zwolle/Fondation Custodia, Paris-1997.
- Souren Melikian (December 22, 2006). "From Turkey, a new genre in art publishing". International Herald TribuneInternational Herald TribuneThe International Herald Tribune is a widely read English language international newspaper. It combines the resources of its own correspondents with those of The New York Times and is printed at 38 sites throughout the world, for sale in more than 160 countries and territories...
. Report on the Ertuğ & Kocabıyık facsimile edition of the complete Voyage pittoresque de Constantinople et des rives du Bosphor.
- Voyage pittoresque de Constantinople et des rives du Bosphore,(Paperback, 350 pages), Antoine Ignace Melling, Adamant Media Corporation, (in French), ISBN 0543973182 ISBN 978-0543973184.
- Correspondence between Antoine Ignace Melling (1763–1801) and Hatice Sultan, Fréderic Hitzel, Session VII, C. Papers in English (Vol. 2): Proceedings of the International Congress on Learning and Education in the Ottoman World on the Occasion of the 700th Anniversary of the Foundation of the Ottoman State, Istanbul, 12–15 April 1999 in 3 volumes. 2000-2002, IRCICA Publications. ISBN 92-9063-090-6