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Become a member CAMBRIDGE, Massachusetts — An exhibition at the Harvard Art Museums is an excursion from Europe to parts eastward, destination Istanbul, capital of the Ottoman Empire, with side trips to the Safavid (Iran) and Mughal (India) domains. Rather than an immersive experience, Imagine Me and You: Dutch and Flemish Encounters with the Islamic World, 1450–1750 encourages quiet contemplation of juxtapositions and adaptations, generalized tropes and nuanced interpretations. This odyssey is made visual in the monumental, 16-foot woodcut “Customs and Fashions of the Turks” (1553) by Pieter Coecke van Aelst, an artist whose one-person show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2014 caused a minor sensation with its grand tapestries and small-scale paper art.
We follow Coecke from Antwerp to Istanbul in 1533 in richly detailed sce.