Orientalists and belly dancers

Luigi Mayer

Italian orientalist Luigi Mayer, active in the 18 th and begin 19 th century travelled extensively in the middle east. His work "Views in Egypt, Palestine and Other Parts of the Ottoman Empire" was published between 1801 and 1804 with historical observations, and incidental illustrations of the manners and customs of the natives of that country. During Mayer’s time, while Britain and France were vying for control of colonial territories, Views in Egypt captivated and informed audiences in Europe about the country’s prevailing culture and even political structures. "Mamalukes exercising in the Square of Muurad Bey’s Palace," for instance, provides a valuable visual record of the military elite’s training exercises, and perhaps a hint of the Ottoman ruler’s efforts to impose centralized authority. Such highly descriptive drawings continue to make the volume an invaluable primary source.
Mayer’s Views in Egypt, composed of lithographs sensationalized with racy depictions such as the debased Mamluk soldier class and Egypt’s indigenous traditions and rituals, was a best seller in Britain in 1801 and was reprinted the following year to satisfy a burgeoning demand. Some introductory remarks to establish the work’s historical context would have enhanced the volume significantly. Instead, Mayer’s brainchild has been reprinted essentially as it was. The book includes remarkable images, including views from the top of the Great Pyramid at Gizeh, the second and third pyramids at Gizeh and the head of the Sphinx.
Aquatint by Luigi Mayer: Ghawazee dancers
Two great developments, one artistic and one political, produced a profound impact on illustrated books in the late 18 th and early 19 th centuries.
Aquatint, a process first developed in France in 1769, became the favored process of color illustration in books, because it imitated the brushwork obtainable with watercolor, thus allowing the artist, engraver, and publisher to capture the richness of watercolor for a wider audience. The great political development was the period of warfare that convulsed Europe in the Revolutionary and Napoleonic eras. For more than a decade this warfare hemmed in British artists, throwing the image of the outside world into sharper relief and giving these artists a more concentrated vision. Most of those who were able to travel before Napoleon's political demise and the many more who did thereafter made sketches themselves or retained artists to depict what they saw. Later, engravers turned these sketches into plates for illustrated books of travel.
These illustrated travel books are artifacts of the transition of travel from the cultural rite of passage of the English aristocracy into its consumption, in the form of livres deluxes, by an expanding and increasingly affluent bourgeoisie. The market for illustrated travel books - and almost all travel books of the era were illustrated - allowed for the production of sumptuous books in which little expense was spared in the collaborative effort of publisher, artist, and engraver.
The publisher Rudolph Ackerman set the standard in this regard. Luigi Mayer's Views of Palestine (1804) presented an English public keenly interested in the Orient with views from another exotic locale. The French too had a taste for exotic scenery, for which Napoleon's campaigns in Egypt and elsewhere provided the fare. Comte Rechberg's Les Peuples de la Russie (1812) provided the French with views of the Russian people that coincided with the Grande Armee's Russian expedition.

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