Dean Christakos« Happy New Year | Main | Today in Interesting Numbers »
January 8, 2006
Cultural Outings
Today I made it to the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum to see the Gentile Bellini exihibit, showcasing Bellini's work in Constantinople after the capture of the city by Mehmed II in 1453.
The most interesting part for me was actually his work A Turkish Janissary, pictured here:
The janissaries are a legendary and almost creepy fighting force, formed from the Turkish devshirme, the human tax on Christian families forced to turn over their children to be raised as elite Muslim troops in the Turkish army, perhaps returning decades later to terrorize their old home villages when they got restless under Turkish rule. The janissaries were a group of very scary, very elite shock troops that all but ran the Ottoman empire.
But take a closer look at Gentile's portrait of a janissary from the 1400s. He could be a man in any Greek or Turkish village. Heck, the guy looks like any number of my relatives. It's a very humanizing portrait from more than 500 years ago.
Posted by Dean at January 8, 2006 11:23 PM