Castigione's Oeuvre: Other Instances of Oriental Attire
Throughout his career, Castiglione produced an enormous body of work, made up of paintings, monotypes, etchings, and drawings. He depicted religious tales, portraits, studies, allegorical images, and history paintings among others.
These images are the only instances that Castiglione depicted a turbaned figure, or exotic Other, save the Oriental Heads. This is striking for a few reasons. First, the strong precedence of images interest in the Other dates back for centuries. Second, the Oriental Heads are so distinct in style and subject matter from Castiglione’s oeuvre, it is surprising that he did not produce many other images of the Oriental Other. The third reason is that none of the figures in the Oriental Heads etchings reappear in later paintings; thus, these cannot be explained as preparatory drawings.
His other depictions of turbaned figures are almost completely limited to works on paper. Drawings and etchings comprise his images of the Oriental Other, supporting the idea that the distillation of the Orient into the turbaned figures was relegated to printed material (see Important Precedence: Early Modern Orientalism). These works are allegorical images, biblical stories, or studies of heads. In each instance, the turbaned figure is the most culturally, temporally, and geographically distanced from the viewer, asserting the turbaned type as the Other in every instance.
This manufactured Other has an unavoidable historical and cultural background, that gives these images strong cultural implications. The Othering of the Orient insinuates the Europeans’ impulse to subvert the East, maintaining their authority over Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Middle East (both politically and culturally). Early modern Orientalism was a closed system, where things were what they were because they were what they were. The European Encounter with the East (and Islam) perpetuated this closed system of depicting the Orient as the imposter, the outsider, and above all, the Other.[1]