Tafel E ‘Orient’ in Archduke Ferdinand’s Portrait Collection

This volume presents a study of the thirty-four portraits in panel E ‘Orient’ in the Kunsthistorisches Museum Wien. In this multi-faced object potentates from south-eastern Europe and Ottoman, Persian and African empires are represented. The small oil paintings are copies from the sixteenth century, part of Archduke Ferdinand’s collection of almost a thousand postcard-sized images, and are presented in the museum’s Münzkabinett. The portraits are explored in a participative research: Interlocutors in Vienna from different backgrounds share their reactions, impressions and questions in interviews. The appearances, production, collecting and presentation of the pictures are discussed, and the results of visits to Innsbruck, Como, Istanbul and Florence regarding the history of the portraits complete the work. While some mysteries remain unsolved, the research shows how people in contemporary Vienna interact with sixteenth-century portraits of an ‘Orient’.