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[‛Alawī; Filālī]

Islamic dynasty and rulers of Morocco since 1631. Like their predecessors the Sa‛dis, the ‛Alawis are sharīfs (descendants of the Prophet Muhammad), and both dynasties are sometimes classed together as the ‘Sharifs of Morocco’. From a base in the Tafilalt region of south-east Morocco, the ‛Alawi family was able to overcome the centrifugal forces exerted by the Berber tribes who had destroyed the Sa‛di state in the first half of the 17th century. To restore political authority and territorial integrity, Mawlay Isma‛il (reg 1672–1727) added a new black slave corps to the traditional tribal army. Although royal power was weak during the 19th century and the early 20th, when the French and Spanish established protectorates, the ‛Alawis’ power was fully restored after independence from the French in 1956.

‛Alawi building activities (see Islamic art, §II, 7(v)) were concentrated in the four cities that have served as their capitals: Fez and Marrakesh at various times from ...

[Mihr ‛Alī]

(fl c. 1795–1830).

Persian painter. He produced at least ten full-size oil paintings of the Qajar monarch Fath ‛Ali Shah (reg 1797–1834). One of the earliest (1797–8; Calcutta, Victoria Mem. Hall), a portrait of him kneeling on a carpet, was probably sent as a present to the amirs of Sind in 1800. Two fine portraits (1803–4 and 1804–5) were painted for the Hall of the Marble Throne in the Gulistan Palace, Tehran, and a third, of the King enthroned (undated; Versailles, Château), was sent to Napoleon. These early portraits show Fath ‛Ali Shah with a squat neck and round face, but Mihr ‛Ali’s drawings improved in the first decade of the 19th century and later portraits show the King with more flattering proportions. These later paintings include portraits of the King standing (1809–10; St Petersburg, Hermitage), kneeling and holding a mace (1813–14; St Petersburg, Hermitage), and a third with the date obliterated (London, B. W. Robinson priv. col.). Mihr ‛Ali’s finest portrait, and perhaps the finest ...

[Ashraf; ‛Alī Ashraf]

(fl c. 1735–80).

Persian painter. Known for a large number of painted and varnished (‘lacquered’) bookbindings, penboxes and mirror-cases (see Islamic art, §viii, 10), ‛Ali Ashraf worked in a small floral style with a characteristic motif of pansies or African violets on a black ground. His style, notable for its richness and delicacy, is derived directly from that of his teacher Muhammad Zaman but is standardized and simplified. His debt to his teacher can be seen in his signature, az ba‛d-i mu ḥammad ‛alī ashraf ast, which can be read as either ‘‛Ali [the Prophet’s son-in-law] is the noblest after Muhammad [the Prophet]’ or ‘‛Ali Ashraf is a follower of Muhammad [Zaman]’. This is the way he signed four mirror-cases with fine bird-and-flower designs (1740–1, Edinburgh, Royal Mus. Scotlandr, 1921–43; 1747, London, V&A, 758–1876; 1751–2, New York, Brooklyn Mus., 88.92; and 1755–6, London, J. Pope-Hennessy priv. col.) and a similar but undated penbox (Berne, Hist. Mus., 21–...

[Camelot]

(b Douai, Jan 12, 1702; d Paris, March 4, 1766).

French painter and collector. His father, Jean-Baptiste Havet, a doctor of Armenian origin, died when Aved was a child. He was brought up in Amsterdam by his step-father, a captain in the Dutch Guards. At 16 he is said to have become a pedlar or ‘camelot’ (hence the nickname given to him by his French acquaintances) travelling through the Netherlands, drawing portraits at fairs. In 1721, after spending short periods in the Amsterdam studios of the French engraver Bernard Picart and of the draughtsman François Boitard (1652–1722), he left the Netherlands to work in the Paris studio of the fashionable portrait painter Alexis-Simon Belle. At this time he met other notable painters including Carle Vanloo and the portrait painters Maurice-Quentin de La Tour, Jean-Baptiste Perroneau and Jean-Etienne Liotard. He also formed a deep and lasting friendship with Jean-Siméon Chardin, with whom he may have collaborated on occasion; they used similar techniques, and he may have encouraged Chardin to turn from still-life painting to figure painting in the 1730s....

[Mīrzā Bābā]

(fl c. 1795–1830).

Persian painter. Reportedly a native of Isfahan, he was employed by the Qajar family at Astarabad, as indicated by a signed drawing of a dragon and phoenix (1788–9; ex-Pozzi priv. col.). After Agha Muhammad (reg 1779–97) ascended the throne, Mirza Baba worked at the Qajar court in Tehran in a wide variety of materials, techniques and scales. His oil portrait (1789–90; Tehran, Nigaristan Mus.) of the Sasanian king Hurmuzd IV (reg ad 579–90) probably belonged to a series of historical portraits, for Mirza Baba painted a second series a decade later. One of the two surviving paintings from the later series (Tehran, A. H. Ibtihaj priv. col.) shows the Saljuq ruler Malikshah (reg 1072–92) with his two ministers. Other early works by Mirza Baba include a still-life with pomegranates, watermelon and flowers (?1793–4; Tehran, Nigaristan Mus.) and an arched panel showing Shirin Visiting Farhad as He Carves Mt Bisitun...

(Antonio Melchiorre)

(b Bologna, Jan 14, 1737; d Gondar, Ethiopia, between 14 Feb and March 3, 1771).

Italian draughtsman and printmaker . He showed early artistic promise and was apprenticed to Giuseppe Civoli (1705–78), a Bolognese painter and professor of architecture at the Accademia Clementina in Bologna. As a student he won the gold medal for architectural design in an open competition at Parma in 1759. He was consequently elected an academician in Bologna at the early age of 22. For his patron, the count and senator Girolamo Ranuzzi, he drew and etched (c. 1760) a notable set of plates of the Palazzo Ranuzzi (now the Palazzo di Giustizia) in Bologna. In 1761 he moved to Rome and began to take commissions as an architectural draughtsman. Here he was recruited to assist the explorer James Bruce of Kinnaird (1730–94) to draw and record Classical remains. For about three years from March 1765 Balugani travelled with Bruce, recording most of the known Classical sites of North Africa and Asia Minor. When Bruce decided to extend his travels to Ethiopia, by way of Egypt and Arabia, to search for the source of the Nile, Balugani accompanied him and made numerous drawings of botanical and zoological specimens, despite having also to compile weather records and travel journals. He was with Bruce when the latter discovered the springs of the Blue Nile (which they believed to be the source of the main river) in ...

[Muḥammad Bāqir]

(fl 1750s–1760s).

Persian painter. He is known for decorations in the margins of manuscripts, copies of European prints and 17th-century paintings, and wash drawings. His subjects range from floral sprays to nudes, such as the watercolour of a sleeping nymph (1765; Dublin, Chester Beatty Lib., cat. no. 282.VI). He contributed paintings and marginal decorations to a sumptuous album (1758–9; St Petersburg, Hermitage), probably compiled for the Afsharid court historian Mirza Mahdi Khan Astarabadi. Muhammad Baqir’s punning signature there suggests that he was a pupil of ‛Ali Ashraf. Muhammad Baqir signed one of the finest marginal paintings in a smaller but similar album (1764; dispersed; sold Hôtel Drouot, Paris, 23 June 1982) and may have been responsible for all of them, which include rose sprays and copies of Susannah and the Elders. Muhammad Baqir is sometimes said to have continued to work under the Qajar ruler Fath ‛Ali Shah (...

(b London, April 1, 1794; d Ely, Oct 16, 1845).

English architect. He was born into a wealthy and cultured family related to the Disraelis and the Ricardos, and he trained in John Soane’s office (1810–16), receiving what was then probably the best architectural education available in England, as in his watercolour of the staircase of Gower House, London (1813; London, Soane Mus.; see Chambers, william, fig.). In 1816 he began a tour of Italy and Greece, which was recorded in letters to his family (untraced; typescript London, Soane Mus.) and in drawings and sketches (London, Soane Mus.; see Jordan). After travelling via Paris to Turin, Florence, Rome, Venice and Vicenza, a meeting with C. R. Cockerell in Rome (1817) persuaded him to visit Greece; during 1818 he went via Naples to Thessaly, Constantinople and Athens, returning to Rome via Sicily.

In June 1819 Basevi was back in London at a moment when building activity was expanding after the depressed years immediately following the end of the Napoleonic Wars. His earliest commissions were minor alteration works for family friends or business acquaintances. In ...

Bazaar, which is rooted in Middle Persian wāzār and Armenian vačaṟ, has acquired three different meanings: the market as a whole, a market day, and the marketplace. The bazaar as a place is an assemblage of workshops and stores where various goods and services are offered.

Primitive forms of shops and trade centres existed in early civilizations in the Near East, such as Sialk, Tepe in Kashan, Çatal Hüyük, Jerico, and Susa. After the 4th millennium BC, the population grew and villages gradually joined together to shape new cities, resulting in trade even with the remote areas as well as the acceleration of the population in towns. The advancement of trade and accumulation of wealth necessitated the creation of trade centres. Trade, and consequently marketplaces, worked as the main driving force in connecting separate civilizations, while fostering a division of labour, the diffusion of technological innovations, methods of intercultural communication, political and economic management, and techniques of farming and industrial production....

(b c. 1723; d Guzel Hisar, Turkey, Sept 19, 1750)

English collector and antiquarian. He was educated at New College, Oxford. After inheriting a large fortune, he went on the Grand Tour to Italy (1740–42). He travelled extensively throughout his short life and went to Italy several times, acquiring antiquities, paintings, engravings, medals, cameos and, above all, drawings. His collection of Old Master drawings was one of the most important assembled in England in the first half of the 18th century. It included examples by Leonardo, Michelangelo, Raphael, Rembrandt and particularly Guercino. Many of these are still identifiable by their beautiful mounts, which have a distinctive ruled and patterned border (see Display of art §IV).

The provenance of the Bouverie drawings was lost sight of until the early 1990s, and until then these mounts were rather misleadingly known as ‘Casa Gennari’ mounts (from the family name of Guercino’s descendants). The greater part of the Bouverie collection was inherited in the first half of the 19th century by the 1st ...

(b Azay-le-Ferron, Indre, June 3, 1756; d Versailles, Nov 1, 1827).

French draughtsman, engraver, sculptor and archaeologist. He received instruction in drawing from Joseph-Marie Vien, Jean-Jacques Lagrenée and Jean-Baptiste Le Prince. In 1778 he departed for Italy, where he developed his landscape draughtsmanship and his passion for antiquity. He travelled incessantly, recording everything he saw and venturing out from Rome to Venice, Naples and Sicily. An example of the numerous drawings he produced is the Ruins of the Baths of Titus Seen from the Colosseum (Paris, Ecole N. Sup. B.-A.). In 1782 a group of amateurs, under the patronage of Emperor Joseph II, commissioned from him a series of views of the Istrian and Dalmatian coast; these were eventually published in J. Lavallée’s Voyage pittoresque et historique de l’Istrie et de la Dalmatie. After a brief spell in France, Cassas followed Marie-Gabriel, Comte de Choiseul-Gouffier, to his new ambassadorial post in Constantinople in 1784. He subsequently visited Syria, Egypt, Palestine, Cyprus and Asia Minor, recording his impressions of Alexandria, Cairo, Smyrna, the Temple of Diana (Artemis) at Ephesos and the Palmyra and Baalbek ruins. Many of the 250 drawings dating from this trip were of hitherto unrecorded sights. With Choiseul’s assistance Cassas published these works in the ...

(b Elson, Hants, 1738; d Tilehurst, nr Reading, Feb 9, 1810).

English antiquarian. He was educated at Winchester School and Queen’s College, Oxford. He became famous through the publication in 1763 of Marmora oxoniensia, an account of the statuary and inscriptions in the University collection, mostly from the Arundel Marbles (now Oxford, Ashmolean). Through Robert Wood, the author of The Ruins of Palmyra, he was introduced to the Society of Dilettanti and invited to undertake an expedition to Asia Minor, together with Nicholas Revett and William Pars. They spent about two years in western Turkey and in Greece (1764–6). Chandler had charge of the historical part of the work, together with the inscriptions, while the architect Revett measured the buildings and the painter Pars recorded the various views. The account of their expedition, Ionian Antiquities, was published in 1769 at the expense of the Society of Dilettanti; it was an important book, used by Edward Gibbon, among others. In ...

(b Paris, Sept 27, 1752; d Aachen, June 20, 1817).

French antiquary and writer. He was the son of the Comte de Choiseul-Beaupré and married the heiress Adelaide-Marie-Louise de Gouffier, whose surname he assumed. He first followed a military career; then, inspired by the Abbé Jean-Jacques Barthélemy, he developed a taste for antiquities; in March 1776 he embarked on a three-year tour of the monuments of Greece and Asia Minor, recording his observations in drawings. He corresponded with various members of the Académie Royale des Inscriptions, of which he was elected a member on his return in 1779. Three years later he succeeded Jean le Rond d’Alembert (1717–83) as member of the Académie Française, on presenting the first volume of his illustrated Voyage pittoresque de la Grèce. He also became an honorary member of the Académie des Beaux-Arts and was a founder of the Société des Amis des Arts.

In 1784 Choiseul-Gouffier was appointed ambassador to the Ottoman Empire by Louis XVI; he set out for Constantinople accompanied by various intellectuals and literary figures, including the poet Abbé Jacques Delille (...

(b ?1715; d London, Feb 7, 1791).

English draughtsman, engraver and dealer. As agent to a number of patrons and subsequently librarian to George III, he was one of the most influential figures in the sphere of collecting in England for some four decades. He was the son of the Rev. John Dalton and younger brother of the Rev. John Dalton, poet and divine, whose connection with Algernon Seymour, Earl of Hertford (later 7th Duke of Somerset), forwarded Richard’s early career in Italy. He had arrived there by 1739 and may have trained in Bologna; by 1741 he was studying under Agostino Masucci in Rome and was already active as a dealer, selling a collection of prints in that year to Henry Clinton, 9th Earl of Lincoln, and cultivating the patronage of Sir Erasmus Philipps, Bart.

In 1749 Dalton visited Calabria and Sicily and then, in his capacity as travelling draughtsman, joined the party of James Caulfeild, 1st Earl of Charlemont, on a tour of Egypt, Turkey and Greece. He was possibly the first English artist to record the ancient monuments of these places. A selection of drawings executed on this tour was engraved by Dalton and published in ...

(b 1722; d Jamaica, Dec 1757).

English traveller and antiquarian. He was educated at Oxford University, spent several years as a young man travelling in Italy and was elected as a member of the Society of Dilettanti in 1755. He was referred to in James Boswell’s Life of Johnson as ‘Jamaica Dawkins’, as his family had extensive sugar plantations in Jamaica. He travelled with Robert Wood and John Bouverie to Baalbek and Palmyra in 1750. For this journey they chartered a boat from London and joined it in Naples; it was well equipped with a library of Greek histories and poems, volumes of antiquities and travel books. They visited many of the Greek islands and part of the Greek mainland, the Bosporus and the coast of Turkey, before travelling overland to Baalbek and Palmyra, where Bouverie died. Together with Wood, Dawkins later published The Ruins of Palmyra and The Ruins of Balbec, to which he contributed the measured drawings (and all of the costs). He and Wood gained a great reputation by these splendid publications of antiquities, though most of the credit for them has gone to Wood....

(b Givry, nr Chalon-sur-Saône, Jan 4, 1747; d Paris, April 28, 1825).

French museum director, writer, graphic artist, collector, archaeologist and diplomat. He was the son of a provincial aristocrat. He went to Paris to further his law studies c. 1765 but entered the studio of Noël Hallé. He became Gentleman-in-Ordinary to Louis XV and was appointed keeper of the collection of engraved gems and medals that Mme de Pompadour had left to the King. In 1772 he entered the diplomatic service as attaché to the French embassy at St Petersburg, he was subsequently posted to Stockholm, Geneva (where his disrespectful engraving Repast at Ferney, of 4 July 1775, angered Voltaire) and, from spring 1776, Naples. There he became acquainted with Sir William Hamilton, the British ambassador, and made many drawings of his future wife Emma. Denon began to acquire a diverse collection of paintings and engravings as well as antiquities from excavations at Nola, Catania, Agrigento, Pompeii and Herculaneum. He purchased the painting of the ...