26 that of tradition Ottoman miniature painting. The Italian Renaissance portraits are
of specific people, and even trees and dogs are particulars. The Italian Renaissance painters mainly aim to depict human beings and other living or non-
living beings realistically.
66
In this painting method, every people are depicted realistically in their portraits because they are seen as “different from all others, a
unique, special, and particular human being” MNR, 187. Soergel emphasizes that image in Renaissance painting takes a special
importance. Religious images served as a vital textbook that instructed in the teachings and history of Christianity and the church, conveyed political and
religious agenda, as well as tools of propaganda.
67
The other religious images, such as portraiture, were also commissioned to commemorate a family member
who was already dead. Portrait paintings were intended to preserve a positive memory and an inner strength and gentleness of the subject after death. This
painting was also said as a vehicle that expressed something about the subject’s own individual nature.
68
2.1.2. The Ottoman Sultan in the 16
th
and 17
th
Century
Since Pamuk’s selected novels also focus on the Ottoman history and this thesis also deals with the historical aspects of the Ottoman Empire in the 16
th
and 17
th
century therefore I present the information on the reign Sultans that can give the readers deeper understanding on my thesis. The information on the reign
66
Eder, “My Name is Red”.
67
Soergel, Arts and Humanities, 364.
68
Soergel, Arts and Humanities, 375.
27 Sultans in My Name is Red and The White Castle is substantial because the two
Sultans, Murad III and Ahmed I, have important roles in encouraging the miniature painters as well as Hoja to imitate and adopt Western art, science, and
technology.
Murad III 1574–1595, the reign Sultan in My Name is Red who is based
on the real historical figure, was Sultan Selim II’s successor.
69
After his father dead, Murad III, as Selim’s eldest son, carried on one family tradition with
ferocity—killing all five of his brothers on the day of his accession. Murat was the last of the sultans to have had some field experience before taking the throne,
having served as a provincial administrator under both his grandfather Süleyman and his own father. But his unusually spirited passion for women resulted in the
presence of 40 concubines in his court who in all produced some 130 sons in addition to uncounted female children.
70
He was the Ottoman sultan who most interested in miniatures and books and he had the Book of Skills, the Book of Festivities and the Book of Victories
produced in İstanbul. The most prominent Ottoman miniaturists, including Osman the Miniaturist Master Osman and his disciples, contributed to them. Moreover,
the Persian miniaturist Velijan Olive, who is commissioned to work for the Ottoman court, came in 1583 to İstanbul.
71
In My Name is Red, Murad orders the Head Illuminator Master Osman to work on the Book of Festivities and Uncle
Effendi to work on the secret book. The Story of Black and the Ottoman palace
69
Pamuk, My Name is Red, 446.
70
Stanford J. Shaw, History of the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey, Volume 1: Empire of the Gazis: the Rise and Decline of the Ottoman Empire, 1280–1808, First Edition Cambridge:
Press Syndicate of the University of Cambridge, 1976 179.
71
Pamuk, My Name is Red, 447.
28 painters was begun in 1591, a year before the thousandth anniversary calculated
in lunar years of the Hegira. Black, “a character whose thoughts, constitution, and temperament are close to Pamuk’s,”
72
returns to İstanbul from the east, beginning the events recounted in the novel.
Sultan Ahmed I 1603-1617 was Murat III’s grandson—mentioned in
the last part of My Name is Red as the Ottoman ruler who destroyed the large clock with statuary sent to the sultan as a present by Queen Elizabeth I. He was
Mehmed III’s eldest surviving son who was still 13 years old in his succession. Ahmed abandoned the old tradition of killing his brother and sent his brother,
Mustafa, to live at the Old Palace at Bayezit along with their grandmother.
73
The reign of Ottoman Sultan Ahmed I was during whose rule the events of The White
Castle take place. It is for the reason that the Sultan here is called “the young sultan” and “the child” by the narrator TWC, 39—for he was still very young, 13
years old, when he became the sultan—and because the narrator also mentions that the sultan in this story is Ahmed the First, Murad the Third’s grandson.
TWC, 43
2.2 Discourse on Issues of Postcolonialism and Orientalism
