Perzische begrafenisrituelen 1727

Bernard Picart created this print titled, ‘Persian Funeral Rites,’ sometime between 1696 and 1733. In the European imagination of this time, the ‘Orient’ was a source of both fascination and misinformation. Picart probably never witnessed these rites himself; his images construct a European fantasy about Persian culture. Notice how Picart’s composition is divided into two registers. The upper scene shows a dying man attended by mourners in a lavish interior. The lower scene depicts bodies exposed in a landscape, left for scavengers. The captions, in French, further interpret the unfamiliar customs for a European audience. Prints like this circulated widely, shaping public perceptions of non-Western cultures. As art historians, we can analyze the visual vocabulary used to construct these cultural narratives. By comparing this print to contemporary texts and travelogues, we can uncover the complex interplay between observation, imagination, and cultural projection that defined Europe's early encounters with the wider world.