Portrait of Sultan Ahmed III

Den Grooten Heer, Dutch for the Great Lord, is inscribed on this canvas, along with the number five. The Great Lord, or Grand Signior, was what Europeans usually called the Ottoman sultan, and this is Ahmed III, who reigned from 1703 to 1730, standing with two attendants beside his palace.

The picture comes from Jean Baptiste Vanmour's workshop in Istanbul. It belongs to the tradition of the costume book, sets of figures showing the ranks and peoples of the Ottoman capital, from the sultan and his household to officials, soldiers and priests, each one labelled so that a foreign owner could tell who was who. Workshops turned such figures out in series, and the Rijksmuseum dates this one only broadly, somewhere between 1700 and 1737. Number four in the same numbered set is the sultan's mother.