Message to the Vizier

The painting from the museum’s collection presents an audience with Sultan Osman III in the Hall of the Topkapi Palace in Istanbul. The Sultan is sitting on the throne under a canopy, accompanied on the left by the vizier and Turkish dignitaries along with two European envoys, one bowing to the Sultan, on the right. He is dressed in a white kaftan and brown robes trimmed with fur. On his head, he is wearing a turban, a pasha’s kavuk, decorated with an egret feather. The Turkish dignitaries are wearing robes, and micevveze turbans on their heads. The walls of the Hall are reddish-brown, with a golden floral pattern. There is a patterned carpet on the floor. The author of the painting is unknown; it is a copy from Antoine de Favray (born September 1706, died February 1781 in Malta), a French painter who specialised in portraits of Ottoman Empire personalities. From 1762, he lived for nine years in Constantinople, where he painted scenes from everyday Turkish life, as well as portraits of Turkish dignitaries and visitors to the empire. He also painted a portrait of French ambassador Charles Gravier de Vergennes (born 1717, died 1787), who lived in Constantinople in 1754–1768 and who is depicted in the Łańcut painting. The painting presents the audience of French envoy Comte de Vergennes with Sultan Osman III (1754–1757) and is one of the series of paintings with “Turkish” themes in the castle. The painting is framed in a wooden, profiled, gilded frame, richly ornamented with a repeating motif of a cock’s comb and a stylised flower bud. It is exhibited in the Turkish Suite on the ground floor of the castle.