Turkish Arms

In 1680 the Ottoman Empire was the power every European court watched, and just three years later its army would be camped outside the walls of Vienna. That is the year Bimbi painted a display of Turkish arms for the Medici in Florence. Ottoman weapons reached Italy as war trophies, diplomatic gifts and prized curiosities, and a grand-ducal collection was expected to own a few. Bimbi normally recorded the fruit and flowers of Tuscany at life size for these same patrons. Here he turns that same cataloguing eye onto foreign steel and leather, setting down the equipment of a feared, distant empire as carefully as he would a branch of lemons.