page_title: Fausto Zonaro
section_title: Istanbul
hierarchical_section_title: Fausto Zonaro / Life / Istanbul
context_page_description: Fausto Zonaro was an Italian painter, best known for his Realist style paintings of life and history of the Ottoman Empire.
context_section_description: In 1892, Zonaro and Pante married, and lived in the Istanbul neighborhood of Pera.
  In Istanbul, over time he gained patronage in aristocratic circles. Munir Pasha, the Minister of Protocol, who invited him to visit Yıldız Palace and meet the prestigious local artist Osman Hamdi Bey. He was employed in teaching painting to the Pasha's wife, and in this way Zonaro and Pante got to know the important artistic figures of Istanbul of that time. In 1896 he was nominated as the court painter (Ottoman Turkish: Ressam-ı Hazret-i Şehriyari) thanks to the intervention of the Russian ambassador who had presented the ruling sultan Abdulhamid II with Zonaro’s work Il reggimento imperiale di Ertugrul sul ponte di Galata (in English: The Imperial Regiment of the Ertugrul on the Galata Bridge), which Abdulhamid II had then purchased.
  The Sultan later commissioned from Zonaro a series of paintings depicting events in the life of the 15th-century Ottoman sultan, Mehmed II. Holding the position of court painter, Zonaro viewed himself as the successor to the Venetian painter Gentile Bellini, who had been commissioned by Mehmed II to paint his portrait over 300 years earlier.
  Also during his stay in Istanbul, Zonaro witnessed the Day of Ashura processions carried out by the Shia Muslims on the tenth of Muharram, and it was the procession of Tatbir that inspired him to paint his renowned painting 10th of Muharram, it was reported that Zonaro said "After witnessing the horripilating procession (of Tatbir) I wish I were able to meet this man they mourn for". The "man" Zonaro speaks of indicates to the oppressed grandson of the Muslim prophet Mohammed, Hussein ibn Ali.
caption: Fausto Zonaro Young Girl Carrying a Pumpkin, 1889
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