Description
In the 18th century, the Orient and the taste for travel became fashionable. This fascination of Europe for the Orient – as a place of conquest and cradle of civilizations – seduced the Age of Enlightenment. While Montesquieu wrote his Lettres Persanes in 1721, Bonaparte led a military campaign in Egypt in 1798 to block the route from India to Great Britain.
The 19th century is the century of Orientalism. History is accelerating and the Orient is plagued by geopolitical issues. With the Greek War of Independence in 1821, and the capture of Algiers from the Turks by the French army in 1830, the Orient made its entry into history and salon conversations. The Orient – or more exactly the Orient – which has a new outlook on the West: that of dreams, of a distant reality, of an exotic “elsewhere”.
Orientalism embodies a duality. Orientalist canvases are a clever alliance of the picturesque, love and death. A cruel prince, naked women, slaves, horsemen in search of strewn treasures and meharis * …
The Orient intrigues as much as it fascinates, with its 1001 mysteries …
*Dromedaries from North Africa.
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