Ottoman Sultan Bayezid I in a cage after defeat at the 1402 Battle of Ankara by his Turco-Mongol conqueror, Timur, Tamerberg or Tamerlane the Great. Detail of 1675 processional frescoed frieze across the facade of Haus zum Grossen Käfig (House of the Great Cage) at Vorstadt 43 in the Altstadt or old town at Schaffhausen, northern Switzerland.
Schaffhausen, northern Switzerland: defeated and dejected Ottoman Sultan Bayezid I (1360-1403) is led into captivity with his hands chained, sitting inside a metal cage on a wooden cart, in this detail of a frescoed frieze originally painted in 1675 across the front of Haus zum Grossen Käfig (House of the Great Cage) at Vorstadt 43 in the Altstadt or old town. The scene, surmounted by a lengthy moralising painted German epigram, depicts the aftermath of the Battle of Ankara in 1402, in which Bayezid’s Ottoman Empire army was vanquished by the Turco-Mongol conqueror variously known as Emir Timur, Timur the Great, Tamerlane, Tamerlaine or Tamerlan the Great or Tamerbeg (1336-1405). Bayezid I never regained his freedom, dying in captivity about eight months after his capture. The original property on this site was owned by the Wiechser family until 1371. The present four-storey Late Renaissance town house was built in 1586, then enlarged in 1675 for aristocrat Rüeger Im Thurn (1632-1701), who commissioned frescoes for the entire facade. The other artworks include illusionist trompe l’oeil architectural decoration framing allegorical scenes, emblems, coats of arms and inscriptions. The frescoes now covering the facade are not the originals, as they were renovated around 1835 and then completely repainted in 1906, retaining all of the original detail, by German artist August Brandes. The artworks were last restored in 2014. The streets of Schaffhausen’s old town are lined with many other fine Gothic, Renaissance and Baroque guild and merchant houses, many with decorative oriel windows and some with sculptured portals and facades covered with Renaissance and later frescoes.
Size: 4159px × 2773px
Location: Schaffhausen, Schaffhausen canton, Switzerland
Photo credit: © Terence Kerr / Alamy / Afripics
License: Royalty Free
Model Released: No
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