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©
Carmen Thyssen Collection
Alberto Pasini

Market in Constantinople

1868
Oil on canvas.
23.5 x 40 cm
Carmen Thyssen Collection
Inv. no. (
CTB.1997.18
)
Not on display
  • Level 2 Permanent Collection
  • Level 1 Permanent Collection
  • Level 0 Carmen Thyssen Collection and Temporary exhibition rooms
  • Level -1 Temporary exhibition rooms, Conference room and EducaThyssen workshop
Level 2
Permanent Collection
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 14 13 15 16 17 18 22 19 20 21 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 Recommended start of the visitClassical rooms
1 14th Century. Early Italian Painting 2 15th Century. German and Spanish Painting 3 15th Century. Early Netherlandish Painting 4 15th Century. Italian Painting 5 15th and 16th Centuries. Renaissance Portraiture 6 16th Century. Villahermosa Gallery 7 16th Century. Italian Painting 8 15th and 16th Centuries. German Painting 9 15th and 16th Centuries. German Painting 10 16th Century. Netherlandish Painting 11 Tiziano, Tintoretto, Bassano and  El Greco 12 17th Century. Caravaggio and Baroque Painting 13 17th Century. Italian, French and Spanish Painting 14 17th Century. Italian, French and Spanish Painting 15 17th Century. Italian, French and Spanish Painting 16 18th Century. Italian Painting 17 18th Century. Italian Painting 18 18th Century. Italian Painting 19 Classical rooms 20 Classical rooms 21 Classical rooms 22 18th Century. Italian Painting 23 17th Century. Dutch Painting. Landscape 24 18th Century. French and English Painting 25 17th Century. Dutch Painting. Scenes of Daily Life and Interiors 26 17th Century. Dutch Painting. Landscape 27 17th Century. Dutch Painting. Portrait 28 17th Century. Dutch Painting. Landscape 29 19th Century. European Painting. Goya and Romanticism  
Level 1
Permanent Collection
30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 Postpop rooms Rodin room
30 18th and 19th Centuries. Transatlantic Relations 31 19th Century. American Landscape and Environmental Awareness 32 19th Century. American Landscape and Urban Life 33 Recovering the ligth. Restoration of Waterloo Bridge, by André Derain 34 20th Century. Expressionist Landscapes 35 20th Century. Expressionist Portraits 36 20th Century. The Language of the Body 37 20th Century. Urban unrest 38 20th Century. Flowers 39 20th Century. Pioneers of abstraction 40 20th Century. Popular flavor 41 20th Century. The Cubist Tradition I 42 20th Century. The Cubist Tradition II 43 20th Century. Abstract Utopias 44 20th Century. Dada and Surrealism 45 20th Century. Interwar Realisms 46 20th Century. American Abstraction I 48 20th Century. Post-ward American Art 49 20th Century. Post-ward European Figurative Art 50 20th Century. Informalisms 51 20th Century. Homo Ludens 52 20th Century. Pop Art 53 Postpop rooms: Ayako Rokakku 54 Postpop rooms: Ayako Rokakku 55 Postpop rooms: Ayako Rokakku 56 Postpop rooms: Ayako Rokakku Rodin Exhibition room
Level 0
Carmen Thyssen Collection and Temporary exhibition rooms
A B C D E F G H I J Hall Temporary exhibition rooms Access to Permanent Collection Entrance Access to Carmen Thyssen Collection Paseo del Prado Garden
A 17th and 18th Centuries. Old Masters B 19th Century. North American Landscape C 19th Century. French Naturalist Landscape D 19th Century. Impressionism E 19th Century. Monet and North American Impressionism F 19th Century. Gauguin and Postimpressionism G 19th and 20th Centuries. Neo Impressionism and its Wake H 20th Century. Early Avant-gardes I 20th Century. Between the Wars Painting. Cubism, Abstraction and Surrealism J 20th Century. North American Painting and Others
Level -1
Temporary exhibition rooms, Conference room and EducaThyssen workshop
Temporary exhibition rooms Conference room EducaThyssen Workshop
This small but fascinating oil gathers all the elements of Alberto Pasini's favourite theme, here expressed with an elegance and bright luminarism that produce a striking effect.

The painting, signed and dated in 1868 (it is therefore part of the series of studies made by the artist in Constantinople between 1867 and 1869) represents a scene crowded with figures close to some moored boats loaded with goods and with limp sails, the sea and the unfailing Yeni Djami mosque.

The boats, represented in the Bosporus strait and depicted with a more concise technique than the very meticulous one used in other of his studies, their reflection in the water, the criss-cross of masts, of rope ladders and of the falls of the furled sails, all produce a lively scene which clearly stands out against the mosque and the sky in the background.

The spontaneous, almost sketchlike, technique is precise and polished, as if the picture had been painted en plein air. The atmospheric effects are either crystal-clear or soft, painted in pearly grey tones, which blend with the sky and the distant horizon. They are interrupted here and there by the reds and yellows of the women's dresses, which liven up the scene of the crowd in the foreground, immersed in a greyish pink cloud of dust.

All this is in perfect consonance with the practice of painting from nature, a common method used by this master since he returned to Paris from Persia in 1856.

For Pasini, who was a skilled draughtsman, as noted by Giuseppe Boccaccio and Girolamo Magnani, his painting and scenography masters at the Academy in Parma (he also studied lithography under Paolo Toschi), painting from life was never merely documentary, and was accompanied from the beginning by an admirable technique and by the choice of picturesque, but not unoriginal, oriental subjects.

However, it was in 1868, on the occasion of a new trip, this time to Turkey, that a crucial event for his art and his future fame took place: his encounter with Istanbul.

The city of Constantinople, with its busy life, its strong, particular, vibrating light which outlines the volumes of the buildings and the figures, became a recurring theme in Pasini's art, a subject dealt with several times, but always with a renewed fantasy, from various points of view and representing different scenes.

This painting can be compared with oils such as On the Banks of the Golden Horn of 1869, belonging to the collection of Count Gaetano Marzotto; Market at the Golden Horn, of 1868; The Port of Constantinople, also of 1868, with the same boats on the left; Market at Yeni Djami of 1869 and Oriental Scene - Market at the Port also of 1869, belonging to private collections and published in 1991. All these works include views of the port, the grandiose domes of the mosque in the background, the onlookers haggling and the horsemen riding splendid animals with shiny coats.

Pasini made many drawings and oils depicting the Islamic temple on the banks of the Golden Horn, such as the painting entitled Yeni Djami (1867-1868) kept in the Museo Civico of his native town Busseto, in which the beautiful building is the only protagonist of the composition.

Here we can clearly see the result of the immense heritage of memories constituted by the corpus of sketchbooks and by the splendid, bright drawings from nature now kept in the Drawings and Prints Cabinet at the Uffizi in Florence, and in many private collections.

Giovanni Godi

19th CenturyPaintingOilcanvas
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Alex Katz (exhibition catalog. Spanish with texts in English)

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  • Private and/or didactic use
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Private and/or didactic use
Market in Constantinople. Mercado de Constantinopla, 1868
Market in Constantinople
Alberto Pasini

©

Carmen Thyssen Collection

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Market in Constantinople. Mercado de Constantinopla, 1868
Market in Constantinople
Alberto Pasini

©

Carmen Thyssen Collection

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