Imagine Orient: a Military Procession by Jan Swart van Gronignen

“Een deel Turcken te Peerde, met boghen en pilkokers, die seer aerdigh en gheestigh zijn”. These are the words used by Carel van Mander, in his famous Schilder-Boeck, to describe a remarkable series of woodcuts by Jan Swart van Groningen. This latter is composed of five self-sufficient sheets which put together form a military procession showing the Emperor Soliman I preceded and followed by Turkish, Mameluke, heathen and Arabish riders.
This series is exceptional in many ways. Unlike most of the processions produced during the first half of the 16th century, this one didn’t commemorate any particular historical even, nor did it participate in propaganda through the use of images. Rather, it proves to be a pure artificial construction, guided by some « documentary » intentions, which partook of a popular taste for exoticism and oriental images. An interesting point is to consider how Jan Swart resorted to the same iconographic canons as those developed for example by Hans Burgkmair and Albrecht Aldorfer in their triumphal processions and equestrian portraits.
Published in Antwerp by Willem Liefrinck in 1526, this series enjoyed a flourishing success in the Lowlands and far beyond, literally stamping its own imprint on the Northern European visual culture – the influence on Pieter Coecke’s Procession of Süleyman I will be considered. Largely spread in the Germanic Empire, these woodcuts were used as models by other artists, such as Daniel Hopfer and Melchior Lorsch (?), for their own Turkish processions. At a time when Christianity looked with apprehension at Turkish progress and supremacy, some personalities like Erhard Schön reinterpreted this series in order to nourish a strong anti-Turkish propaganda.