Head of an Oriental (1600s): Art, History and Details

Head of an Oriental (1600s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Jan Lievens (Dutch, 1607–1674).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

As Europeans more actively engaged in sea travel and trade in the 1600s, references to distant locales became popular among artists. This is one of a series of head studies of men in Turkish costume created by Jan Lievens in the 1630s. He sketched this bearded, turbaned man loosely but with precise details, such as the paisley pattern, a traditional Persian design, on his scarf. While making this print, Lievens shared a studio with Rembrandt, and the artists’ shared a mutual emphasis on sketching freely with an etching needle.

Object facts

• Title: Head of an Oriental
• Date: 1600s
• Creator attribution: Jan Lievens (Dutch, 1607–1674)
• Culture: Netherlands
• Type: Print
• Technique: etching
• Collection: PR - Etching
• Department: Prints
• Accession number: 1921.173

Collection credit

Gift of The Print Club of Cleveland

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.