Dame Grecque, dans son Apartement, plate 68 from "Recueil de cent estampes représentent differentes nations du Levant"

Art Historical Context

This print, titled *Dame Grecque, dans son Apartement* (Greek Lady in Her Apartment), is plate 68 from the influential 1714–15 publication *Recueil de cent estampes représentant différentes nations du Levant*. Created through etching and engraving after designs by the Flemish artist Jean Baptiste Vanmour, it offers European viewers a glimpse into domestic life in the Ottoman Empire. Vanmour lived and worked in Constantinople for nearly two decades, producing careful studies of local costumes, interiors, and social customs that were later engraved by specialists like Gérard Jean Baptiste Scotin I and published by Jacques Le Hay. The image reflects the early eighteenth-century European fascination with the “Levant”—the eastern Mediterranean region—during a period of diplomatic and commercial exchange between France and the Ottoman court. Rather than exotic fantasy, Vanmour’s scenes aimed for a measure of ethnographic accuracy, documenting the dress and surroundings of Greek, Turkish, Armenian, and other communities under Ottoman rule. The medium of etching and engraving allowed these detailed observations to be widely circulated in book form, shaping Western perceptions of Eastern cultures for generations. Housed today in the Metropolitan Museum’s Department of Drawings and Prints, this work exemplifies how prints served as both artistic records and cultural documents, bridging distant worlds through meticulous line work and careful observation.

About the Artist

Gérard Jean Baptiste Scotin I|Jacques le Hay|Jean Baptiste Vanmour (Italian|French) · 1591 |1671 –1623 |1716

Italian, Rome (?) 1591/92–1623 Venice|French, 1671–1716