The Maiden's Tower

The tower stands on a tiny island at the mouth of the Bosphorus, off the shore of Istanbul, where it has guarded the strait since medieval times. Ivan Aivazovsky painted this view in 1848. By then he was the official painter to the Russian navy and the most celebrated marine artist in the empire, a man who claimed to paint the sea from memory rather than from life. He knew this water at first hand, having sailed to the Ottoman capital, and he came back to its skyline many times. Here a wave breaks into white foam in the foreground while the tower catches the last warm light, the palette moving from silvery green in the water to deep blue at the horizon. Local legend tied the tower to a princess shut away from a prophecy, which is where the name the Maiden's Tower comes from.