- Title
- Grand Vizier Davud Pasha in a Procession of Janissaries and Guards (Left-hand side of a Double Page Composition)
- Date Made
- circa 1620-22
- Medium
- Ink, opaque watercolor, and gold on paper
- Dimensions
- 9 1/4 × 7 11/16 in. (23.5 × 19.53 cm)
Frame: 20 × 15 × 1 1/2 in. (50.8 × 38.1 × 3.81 cm)
- Accession Number
- M.85.237.42
- Collecting Area
- Art of the Middle East: Islamic
- Curatorial Notes
In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, a primary responsibility of Ottoman court painters was to illustrate historical events. It is unclear which text this manuscript painting once accompanied but with the identification of its right-hand facing page, it is now possible to determine the moment in history to which it refers. Here, the grand vizier Davud Pasha, is shown riding alongside a coterie of the sultan’s elite guard, the Janissaries, portrayed wearing their distinctive ornamented headgear (see M.2002.1.27), while in the foreground lower-ranking troops in plainer garb drag the shaft of a wooden carriage. The facing page, now in a private collection, depicts the body of the carriage, in which rides the newly re-instated sultan Mustafa I (r. 1617-8, 1622-3), who the Janissaries used to depose sultan Osman II (r. 1618–22). Later inscriptions added to the LACMA painting identify Osman as riding alongside Davud Pasha but these are likely inaccurate since Davud Pasha would order Osman’s execution shortly after Mustafa took power.
- Selected Bibliography
- Binney, Edwin, 3rd. "Turkish Arts of the Book in the Binney Collection." Arts of Asia 17, no.6 (Nov/Dec 1987): 97-104.
