6733 - Bellanti, Michele

Bellanti, Michele Veiled Woman on the Bosporus, with the silhouette of Istanbul in the background. Watercolor over pencil, with partial white highlights, on vellum. 27.7 x 22.4 cm. Signed “M Bellanti” lower right and dated “Constantinople 1843” lower left. Michele Bellanti is considered one of the most important Maltese artists of the 19th century. Although he initially worked as a lawyer, his particular interest lay in the visual arts from an early age. His training took him to Florence, Venice, and Rome, where he encountered various movements in Italian art. He was also significantly influenced by the Maltese painter Pietro Paolo Caruana. Later, Bellanti served as a professor at the drawing school in Valletta. Bellanti was a versatile artist who, in addition to paintings and drawings, left behind an extensive body of graphic work. In 1844, he created a series of 30 hand-colored lithographs that offer insights into 19th-century architecture, everyday life, social customs, and clothing. Bellanti’s costume studies hold a special place among these works. In them, he captured fabrics, cuts, headwear, and accessories with great artistic precision. The figures depicted do not merely appear as anonymous wearers of traditional attire, but as individuals observed in their own right. His drawings thus straddle the line between portraiture, ethnographic study, and romantic travel depictions. At the same time, they reflect the widespread European interest in the 19th century in regional and non-European clothing traditions. This watercolor, which depicts a woman in Ottoman attire on a hill overlooking the Bosphorus, was likely created within this context. In the background, one can make out the silhouette of the Blue Mosque in Istanbul. - Please request condition reports for the lots, as the condition is listed in the catalog only in exceptional cases. - Please ask for condition reports for individual lots, as the condition is usually not mentioned in the catalog.