GRELOT

RELATION NOUVELLE D’UN VOYAGE DE CONSTANTINOPLE.
ENRICHIE DE PLANS LEVEZ PAR L’AUTEUR SUR LE LIEUX, & DES FIGURES DE TOUT CE QU’IL Y A DE PLUS REMARQUABLE DANS CETTE VILLE. PRESENTEE AU ROY.

GRELOT, Guillome Joseph

Paris, 1680

First Edition with 13 planches gravées, 4 gravures in texte
Grelot travelled with Chardin to the Levant and Persia from 1671 to 1676. In Constantinople Grelot took many drawings of St Sophia and other monuments remaining accurate depiction for 150 years.

Grelot wandered the streets of Constantinople dressed as a Turk and was thus able to gain access to mosques, and other places of interest. His systematic plans of St. Sophia remained the best available until the work of Texier and Fossati one hundred and fifty years later. The most famous plate is the extraordinary panorama of the ‘Grand Serrail de Constantinople’, a lovely impression here, though with one or two repairs (without loss) to the folds.

“Through the acts of describing and depicting, Grelot inscribes Constantinople as subject to his design. He imposes his artistic will and captures the city’s likeness. He especially devotes energy and space to setting forth the religious customs, practices, and monuments of Islam — as if these were the mainstays of Ottoman power that constituted the real challenge to a French take-over. His descriptions, diagrams, snatches of bookish history, along with his casual anecdotes all point, however discreetly, to a religious orientation as key to the Ottoman world (and to French national sentiment).” Michèle Longino, Duke university.