Janitsaar 1562

François Desprez made this engraving of a Janissary sometime between 1500 and 1600. What can this image tell us about the relationship between Europe and the Ottoman Empire at the time? The image presents a Janissary, an elite soldier of the Ottoman Empire, in full military attire. Desprez likely never encountered a Janissary in person. Instead, he would have relied on second-hand accounts from travelers or diplomatic envoys. Note the ornate frame and descriptive text. These visual and textual elements are significant. They place the figure within a European context of collecting, classifying, and making sense of foreign cultures. The image reflects a mixture of fascination and trepidation with the Ottoman Empire, a major military and economic power at the time. Historians studying the early modern period consult a variety of sources, including travel literature, diplomatic correspondence, and military records, to reconstruct the complex relationship between Europe and the Ottoman Empire. Art like this reveals the ways in which cultural and political anxieties get inscribed on the European imagination.