(Image source from: Unusually excellent oil painting priced 1.6 million lira!)

An unusually excellent oil painting by Islam's last caliph, the whereabouts of which were unknown for decades, reached 1.6 million lira at auction during Sunday. An unknown collector secured Women In The Courtyard, by Abdulmecid II in 1899, subsequent to a intensely contested round of bidding. At the conclusion the asking price had been 1.2 million lira.

The painting gives a representation of semi-naked women attended by harem eunuchs around a pool. The work pays homage to the Roman goddess Venus and is a prominent greeting to 19th-Century Orientalist painters, like France's Jean-Leon Gerome. Bora Keskiner of Alif Art, the Istanbul auction house which handled the sale, told Reuters that there have been questions about whether the conservative government and new elite would be feeling comfort accompanied by a painting by the caliph that features nudes.
(AW:SB)