A PANORAMIC VIEW OF THE NEW SERAGLIO

by Carbognano and Viero

With its large scale and precise topographical transcription, this engraving is a rare testimony to the Sublime Porte at the end of the 18th century. Eighty points of interest located inside the Topkapi Palace, from the most intimate apartments to Hagia Sophia and Sultan Selim’s mausoleum, are identified with numbers on the drawing and captioned below. Although this engraving originates from the left part of a large ink drawing dedicated after 1794 to Manuel Godoy, Spain’s First Secretary of State, it was traded in Venice as early as 1778. However, only one copy, kept at the Benaki Museum in Athens, Greece, has ever been referenced since. An engraved copy of this panorama, formerly part of the Von Celsing collection, is said to be kept in the collections of the Orientalist Museum in Doha, Qatar.

Cosimo Comidas de Carbognano (also known as Komitas Körmüciyan) probably painted this substantial view in 1778. The Esprit des journaux français et étrangers mentioned at the time that "a view of the seraglio and other buildings and gardens located alongside the canal as well as the Hagia Sophia and Chalcedonia in Asia as seen from Galata, has recently been published here (in Pera). The engraving was based on a drawing by Mr. Cosmo Comidas de Carbognano, born in Constantinople & raised in Naples, whose court sponsored his language studies as a child: in recognition of which he dedicated it to Mr. de Ludolf, Minister of Naples in Constantinople".
A grandson of Der-Comidas Keumudjian, a revered Armenian elder who died as a martyr after adhering to the views of the Catholic Church of Rome, and son of John Keumudjian, dragoman to the King of Sicily, Cosimo continued his father's legacy by serving the legation of the Kingdom of Naples.

Between 1778 and 1785, Carbognano traveled through the Bosporus area with Count of Ludolf, whom he worked for as an interpreter, as Louis François Cassas would a few years later alongside Choiseul-Gouffier. Abbot Sestini, who also benefitted from Count of Ludolf’s patronage, wrote in 1778 about Carbognano that he "will successively represent all the antiquities of Constantinople and [of] the various Turkish monuments around the capital". This work took its final form in 1794 in the Descrizione topografica di Constantinopoli, arrichita di figure. Our engraving is one of the first illustrations used for this book; together with other large drawings made circa 1778, they make a precise picture and a scenic view of Constantinople.

Although Carbognano dedicated this engraving to his patron, Count of Ludolf, Ambassador of Naples, he was unable to have it printed in Constantinople for lack of qualified professionals. He therefore entrusted Teodoro Viero (1740-1819), a Venetian merchant, with this task. Viero used to buy drawings made by travelers in order to replicate landscapes, scenes of life and monuments from all over the world. Viero offered him "100 ducats per strip, a low price for this size" and sold prints of the panoramic view in his store, as mentioned in an advertisement published on May 31, 1788 in the Notizie Del Mondo: "we also happen to know that the same store is selling an impressive print of the view of the new Seraglio and part of the city of Constantinople drawn with the utmost accuracy by Mr. Cosimo Comidas of Constantinople; this one has a length of four imperial sheets of paper, with three more half sheets at the bottom for the caption: such a large size was necessary to make the most minute things visible. "In Constantinople, an “illuminated” copy, such as ours, was sold for 33 Ottoman piasters.