Castiglione’s Oriental Heads

Castiglione produced this series of etchings in the mid 1640s while residing in Genoa.[1] They are all approximately fairly small, ranging from 99 x 80 mm to 188 x 138 mm, and were created using soft-ground etching. The series has not yet been examined as an important series in its own right and has typically monographs on Castiglione briefly discuss the etchings.

None of the figures have ever been identified as real people; however, this is not a result of the insufficient scholarship on the works. The figures in the etchings weren't real people. Their faces are either generic, or shrouded in shadow, making them impossible to recognize.

More importantly, the cohesive element throughout the series is the Oriental attire. The figures wear loosely wound turbans, some topped with feathers or tassels, while others wear floppy caps. The figures themselves are elderly men, youths, or in one case, a young woman.

Castiglione depicted each figure in bust, ignoring the clothing covering the rest of the bodies. Their heads each dominate the composition, intensified by the distinct headdresses they wear. Castiglione used the turban in a similar way as his predecessors, continuing the iconography of the turn. The headdresses are the only indication of the figures’ ethnicities and identities, and insinuate ideas of the Orient, exotic lavish garments, and the Other.

Yet, the headdresses suggest that Castiglione did employ a certain level of imagination in rendering the garments. Each headdress is different from the next; the simple turbans are wound differently, and the more elaborate feathered turbans differ from one another as well. From globular simple turbans to dramatic conical feathered headdresses, Castiglione still remained interested in the turban throughout his etchings.

These headdresses are not like the taj in Gentile Bellini’s works; they are individualized costumes yet they still represent the generic turbaned type. The etchings are the distillation of the Orient into one aspect of attire, ignoring the figures’ faces, bodies, and identities. The repetition of a generic turbaned type is the epitome of a Baroque Orientalism, keeping the Orient submissive to the Occident, perpetuating the image of the Orient as the Other.