Nicolay de Nicolas images
In 1551, Nicolas de Nicolay accompanied the French ambassador to the Ottoman court—as official royal geographer—to Istanbul to record the culture and people he saw while there. The result of this sojourn consisted of a book of both his written observations and woodcut prints of the people he saw while there. Nicolay’s book “Les quoter premiers lives des navigations et peregrinations orientales” was reprinted and studied all over the European continent over the next few decades. One such illustration of Ottoman Islamic culture witnessed by Nicolay is his depicted of a Donna Turca andante al Bagno (Turkish Woman walking to the Bath) where we see a woman dressed in a veil and her slave on their way to the hamam. The structure of, and act of going to, the hamam was an essential part of everyday culture in 16th century Islamic Istanbul. Nicolay’s depiction of this practice in his book helped spread this knowledge throughout Europe.