View over Roofs towards the Column of Arcadios in Constantinople

In the mid-sixteenth century, Melchior Lorck spent approximately four years in Constantinople (present-day Istanbul), the capital of the Ottoman Empire. For Lorck, this seemed a very foreign culture with a foreign religion, Islam. Lorck arrived there, as part of a delegation sent by the Holy Roman Empire, and his task was to document the Ottoman culture and subsequently present his pictures back in Europe. Here he has drawn the view from his residence. With lines of great accuracy and precision, he strives to convince us that this is how it actually looked. For example, you can recognize the distinctive Atik Ali Pasha Mosque in the background a little to the right, and the Sea of Marmara appears in the distance. On the left, somewhat surprisingly, a loving couple is seen on a covered terrace. Why did Lorck include this scene, which could be considered inappropriate in several ways? Perhaps he used it as a sort of marker of credibility: ‘That is what I saw, so I had to put it in’? Its inclusion makes us trust the veracity of Lorck’s image (50 Favorites in the SMK Collection).