Inerior of a harem in Istanbul

Description

Featured in the 1836 collaborative work of Thomas Allom and Robert Walsh, this steel engraving depicts a fictional Ottoman harem interior that adorned the fantasies of the 19th-century Western audience. Set in a theatrical room embellished with rich carvings, it reflects Europe's exotic, mysterious, and luxurious visualizations of Eastern private life through a woman playing music on a divan, a man smoking a hookah, and a black eunuch waiting in the shadows.