Related Images Gallery

The Cossacks Reply to the Sultan (Zaporozhtsy), c1890, (1939). Creator: Il'ya Repin

The Cossacks Reply to the Sultan (Zaporozhtsy), c1890, (1939). Reply of the Zaporozhian Cossacks to Sultan Mehmed IV of Turkey, also known as Cossacks of Saporog Are Drafting a Manifesto, 19th-century imagining of a supposed historical event of 1676, based on the legend of Cossacks sending an apparently rude and insulting reply to an ultimatum from Sultan Mehmed IV of the Ottoman Empire. On the right is Taras Bulba (in a white cap), the hero of Gogol's tale of the same name; on the left is Andrei, Taras Bulba's son; almost in the centre sits Ataman (Chief) Serko with a pipe in his mouth'. Ilya Repin (1844-1930) took nearly 20 years to paint the picture, for which Tsar Alexander III paid him 35, 000 rubles, at the time the greatest sum ever paid for a Russian painting. In the collection of The State Russian Museum, St Petersburg, Russia. From "The Russian State Museum". [State Art Publishers, Moscow and Leningrad, 1939]

© The Print Collector / Heritage-Images

Scene from A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens, 1843. Artist: John Leech

Scene from A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens, 1843. The irascible, curmudgeonly Ebenezer Scrooge, sitting alone on Christmas Eve, is visited by the ghost of Marley, his late business partner. The same night he is visited by three more apparitions, the ghosts of Christmas Past, Christmas Present and Christmas Future, whose revelations cause him to wake on Christmas Day a changed man. He sends a turkey to Bob Cratchit his clerk, thoroughly enjoys the festivities and becomes a kindly, jolly old man. From A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens. (London, 1843). This was the first in the series of five Christmas books Dickens published

© Ann Ronan Picture Library / Heritage-Images

Three women of the Turkish Harem

Three women of the Harem, pose for the photographer. The true historical nature of the Turkish/Eastern/Ottoman Harem was the housing of the women (and attendant eunuchs), of the Imperial or noble household, in a usually polygamous household. These quarters were enclosed and forbidden to men. The institution of the harem exerted a certain fascination on the European imagination, especially during the Age of Romanticism/Orientalism due in part to the writings of the adventurer Richard Francis Burton. Many Westerners imagined a harem as a brothel consisting of many sensual young women lying around pools with oiled bodies, with the sole purpose of pleasing the powerful man to whom they had given themselves. Much of this is recorded in art from that period, usually portraying groups of attractive women lounging nude by spas and pools. The purpose of Harems during the Ottoman Empire, was for the royal upbringing of the future wives of noble and royal men. These women would be educated so that they were ready to appear in public as a royal wife

© Mary Evans Picture Library 2015 - https://copyrighthub.org/s0/hub1/creation/maryevans/MaryEvansPictureID/10280507