A Greek Priest 1700 - 1737

Jean Baptiste Vanmour, a painter working for the French crown, made this oil on canvas depicting ‘A Greek Priest’. Vanmour was one of several Western European artists to find a market for paintings of the Ottoman Empire and its surroundings. He was unusual, however, in receiving an official position at the court of the Sultan in Istanbul. So how might this context have shaped his art? In the 18th century, there was growing fascination in the West with the ‘Orient’ - nowhere more so than in the institutions of art. While some artists painted battle scenes or grand ceremonies, Vanmour specialized in portraits of individuals, often members of different ethnic or religious groups within the Empire. Such images fed the appetite for knowledge about foreign cultures. At the same time, paintings like this one also reflected and reinforced Western perceptions of the ‘other’. By consulting sources from the period, we can learn a lot about the function and perception of such paintings.