Melchior Lorck (also Lorch, Lorichs and Lorich; 1526/271583) was a Renaissance painter, draughtsman, and printmaker of Danish-German origin. He produced the most thorough visual record of the life and customs of Turkey in the 16th century that is to this day a unique source. He was also the first Danish artist of whom a substantial biography is reconstructable and a substantial body of artworks is attributable.
Youth and early training Melchior Lorck was born in either 1526 or 1527 as son of a city clerk, Thomas Lorck, in Flensborg, in the duchy of Schleswig, in present-day Germany.For the family history, see: Lorck-Schierning (1949); see also Wolfgang Müller's entry in Allgemeine deutsche Biographie & Neue deutsche Biographie, Vol. 15 (1987). The first document relating to him is the receipt of a royal Danish 4 year travel stipend from the Danish king, Christian III, signed on March 22, 1549, in Flensburg.Fischer, Bencard and Rasmussen (2009-2010), Document no. 1549 – March 22 His earliest engravings stem from the years before the travel stipend, starting with rather unsecure copies after Heinrich Aldegrever, but soon developing a fine control of the burin as in the staunchly anti-papal The Pope as a Wild Man from 1545 and the Portrait of Martin Luther from 1548.On this print it says the artist was 21 years old when he created it, which is why one can extrapolate his approximate birth date. With the royal travel stipend Lorck went to southern Germany, settling in Nuremberg around 1550, where he paid tribute to that city's preeminent artist of the previous generation, Albrecht Dürer in a portrait print building on Hans Schwarz' portrait medal of the artist.
After a visit in Rome in 1551 and what seems to have been a short period of employment at the residence of count palatine Otto Henry in Neuburg an der Donau he worked for the circle of the prominent Fugger family in Augsburg, thereby drawing nearer to the imperial Habsburg family.
The years in Turkey
In 1555 Lorck was assigned to the embassy that the German king Ferdinand I (from 1556 Holy Roman Emperor) sent to the so-called Sublime Porte, the court of Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent in Constantinople (Istanbul). The aim of the embassy was to negotiate a settlement over Hungary over which both parties claimed supremacy. After the Ottomans had defeated the Hungarian army in the Battle of Mohács in 1526, where King Louis II of Hungary died,Louis II of Hungary had been married to Mary of Austria, Queen of Hungary, a sister of Ferdinand I the so-called Little War in Hungary raged on. The Ottomans held the upper hand during most of this war, which was part of the larger Ottoman–Habsburg wars. The embassy, whose efforts finally led to a cease-fire in 1562, was led by Ogier Ghiselin de Busbecq, and is renowned for the records of it found in the 'Turkish Letters' by Busbecq, published in 1581–1588 in Antwerp. Of the three and a half years that Lorck spent in the Turkish capital, approximately one and a half were spent with the rest of the entourage in confinement at the caravanserai where the Germans had been installed.
In 1555 at the caravanserai, the Elçi Hanı, Lorck produced engraved portraits of Busbecq and his co-envoys, Ferenc Zay and Antun Vrančić (Antonius Verantius), a few drawings of animals and a view over the rooftops of the city from one of the top windows of the lodging. In the periods of greater freedom however, he would draw ancient and modern monuments of the city, as well as the customs and dresses of the various peoples gathered from all parts of the Ottoman Empire. At the end of his sojourn, he must have been spending extensive time with the Turkish military, as he was later able to portray a large number of different ranks and nationalities in the Ottoman army.
Imperial employment
Lorck returned to Western Europe in the autumn of 1559. In 1560 he is documented in Vienna, where he stayed until 1566. His drawings of antique monuments of Constantinople and surroundings date from these years. The Arcadius Column, the pedestal of Theodosius the Great's obelisk on the hippodrome and the pedestal of Constantine's Column both represent monuments that are lost today. The monumental Prospect of Constantinople, seen from across the Golden Horn at Galata / Pera was also made at this time. This drawing, held at Leiden University Libraries, is 1145 centimeters long and 45 centimeters high, drawn on twenty-one sheets, executed in brown and black ink with some watercolor, teeming with detail, is considered to be one of the hallmarks of early topographic drawing. It also contains the earliest self-portrait of the artist. See the digital version Prospect of Constantinople.
While in Vienna, Melchior Lorck was contacted both by the brother of the late king Christian III, duke Hans the Elder of Schleswig-Holstein-Haderslev who demanded his service. Lorck responded willingly, but was eager to excuse himself for being too busy. While finally answering the duke in January 1563, he also sent King Frederik II a letter, containing a lengthy description of his career up to the date.Sometimes referred to as his autobiography, see: Fischer (1990) and Fischer, Bencard and Rasmussen (2009-2010), doc.no. 1563-January 1 for the full text. In 1562 Melchior Lorck had produced the large engraved bust portraits of Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent and the Persian envoy in Constantinople, Ismaïl, which he added to his letters. In the letters, Melchior Lorck asked for funding, which effected a gracious royal gift of 200 Danish rigsdaler, to be handed over to him via his brother, Andreas Lorck, who had himself recently stepped into the king's service in Copenhagen.
Soon after he had written to both lords in January 1563, new assignments kept him busy however, and he remained in Vienna for another five years. In 1562, the son of Ferdinand I, Maximilian, had been elected King of the Romans (i.e. emperor-to-be) in Frankfurt am Main, and had since been travelling down the Danube to receive the homage of the cities, with a final stop in Vienna, which prepared itself for a grandiose entry to receive him in March 1563. Melchior Lorck was put in charge of the setting, which meant redressing of both the city itself, with triumphal arches, wine wells and tree-lined streets and of the inhabitants, dressed i Habsburg colours, varying from rank to rank and occupation to occupation.Kayser (1979)
In 1564, on February 22, the emperor confirmed the alleged noble status of both Melchior Lorck and his three brothers, Caspar, Balthasar, and Andreas, citing in the elevation document Melchior's Turkish sojourn as the main argument for the elevation. Around the same time, Lorck was employed as Hartschier (from Italian: arciere), an honorary position with an annual salary in the horse guard of the emperor that he would keep until 1579. In 1566, he followed the emperor in a campaign in Hungary that would eventually see the death of Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent during the Battle of Szigetvár.
In December that year the emperor, Maximilian, wrote a rather unusual letter to his “cousin” (i.e. cousin in office), King Frederik II, asking him to receive Melchior Lorck well, as Lorck was to go to Denmark to collect the inheritance after his eldest brother, Caspar, who had been killed in the Northern Seven Years' War between Denmark and Sweden. The letter also demanded the king to let him return to the emperors service, thus foreboding any claim that the king would have on Lorck.Fischer, Bencard and Rasmussen (2009-2010), doc.no. 1566 - December 1. As Melchior travelled north, however, he appears only to have come as far as Flensburg, before making his way south again.It is likely that he met his other brother, the adventurous Andreas, in their hometown and learned how Andreas had just fallen steeply from favour, and perhaps realized that the name Lorck was not advantageous to flash at the Danish court. Anyway, Melchior turned south while his brother entered the service of the enemy and made the bad reputation of his name even worse.
In Hamburg In 1567 Melchior Lorck turns up in documents from the council of the city of Hamburg, and seems to remain there at least until 1572, when he draws up his last will and testament in that city.Fischer, Bencard and Rasmussen (2009-2010), Document no. 1572 – February 15 Initially, Lorck was employed as cartographer, mapping the lower streams of the river Elbe, from Geesthacht to the sea, in order to support Hamburg's legal claims to the stable rights in a dispute with its neighbor Brunswick-Lüneburg. The magnificent map resulting from this commission is still in the possession of the State Archives of Hamburg today, where it remains one of the most precious holdings.Lappenberg (1847); Bolland (1964)
Another important commission for the city was the rebuilding of the city gate Schartor (demolished), which was begun in 1568 and finished in 1570.The documents are reproduced in Fischer, Bencard and Rasmussen (2009-2010), document nos. 1570 – September 17, 1570 – October 22, and 1574 – August 30. While in Hamburg, Lorck published the turcophobic pamphlet Ein Liedt vom Türcken und Anti-Christ (A Song on the Turk and Antichrist), quite different in tone from his later, more neutrally descriptive renderings of the Turks. In Lorck's testament, one of the only glimpses of a family life shines through as he leaves everything to a certain widow, Anna Schrivers, whom he describes as his betrothed bride. She is never heard of again. Last Lorck was heard of in Hamburg was after his sojourn in Antwerp when in 1574 he finally received his salary and reimbursement for the SchartorFischer, Bencard and Rasmussen (2009-2010), document no. 1574 – August 30 and where in 1575 he was called to witness at the Reichskammergericht in a case about the proper belonging of the area east of Hamburg called Vierlande and drew a map to document his statement.Fischer, Bencard and Rasmussen (2009-2010), document no. 1575 – June 13; catalogue no. 1575,1.
In Antwerp In 1574 Lorck was found in Antwerp, where he seems to have been since 1573. He was one of the first to write an entry into the album amicorum of Abraham Ortelius, and befriended the publisher and engraver Philip Galle, who dedicated Hans Vredeman de Vries’s book about wells and fountains to him.Fischer, Bencard and Rasmussen (2009-2010), Document no. 1574 – n.d. (a) And he worked for the printing press of Christophe Plantin (woodblocks after his design are still found in the Plantin-Moretus Museum in Antwerp). Laudatory remarks in the Civitates orbis terrarum of Georg Braun and Frans HogenbergFischer, Bencard and Rasmussen (2009-2010), Document no. 1574 – n.d. (b) as well as the portrait of the antiquarian Hubert Goltzius, brother of Hendrik Goltzius, point to the network he was able to establish during his stay in the city. The turbulence of the Dutch Revolt made him leave the city in the summer of 1574, as his letter to Ortelius from October implies.Fischer, Bencard and Rasmussen (2009-2010), Document no. 1574 – October 10
Antwerp was the most promising of Lorck's stations in life, as he was here in one of the most important humanist centres of Europe, due to the prolific publishing houses, with Plantin's as the most important. A bronze medal to his honour was struck there by Steven van Herwijck (now in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna). And he published his only more substantial book, the Soldan Soleyman Tvrckhischen Khaysers, vnd auch Furst Ismaelis auß Persien, Whare vnd eigendtliche contrafectung vnd bildtnuß (i.e. The True and Real Counterfeits and Pictures of the Turkish Emperor Sultan Süleyman and