Mehmed The Hunter

1 June 2006 - 1 October 2006

Paintings commissioned by the 17th century Swedish Ambassador Claes Rålamb

Sultan Mehmed IV, remembered as Mehmed the Hunter because of his passion for hunting, departed for Edirne in 1657 on a hunting expedition with a large entourage in a display of imperial majesty that has been preserved for history as a visual document in the form of a series of oil paintings commissioned by Claes Rålamb, then the Swedish Ambassador to Istanbul.

This almost cinematographic record consisting of a total of twenty paintings is preserved at the Nordiska Museet in Sweden. A selection of sixteen of the paintings that are in condition for exhibition now return to Istanbul nearly three hundred and fifty years after this event as the guest of the Pera Museum..