Featured artwork
Artist: Jean Léon Gérôme
Style: Orientalism
Date: 1870
Museum: Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, United States)
Orientalist images represent more than two-thirds of Gérôme's painted oeuvre and are based on his travels in the Near East, especially North Africa. Paul-Marie Lenoir, Gérôme's student and one of his traveling companions, recorded a description of their 1868 visit to the Egyptian mosque of 'Amr in Cairo, founded in A.D. 640, whose interior Gérôme depicted in this painting. The rows of worshipers, ranging from the dignitary and his attendants to the loincloth-clad Muslim holy man, face Mecca during one of the five daily prayers. It is unlikely, however, that Gérôme witnessed such a scene at this particular mosque, which, by 1868, had fallen into disuse. Rather, the image is probably a composite of sketches as well as photographs of various sites.
