Italian born and French trained, Alberto Pasini became a well-known mid-19th-century Orientalist painter, admired by such discerning dealers and collectors as Baltimorean expatriate George A. Lucas, to whom this canvas once belonged. Pasini traveled to many destinations in the Near East, including Persia, Armenia, Egypt, and Turkey. This particular canvas captures a market in Istanbul. Finely detailed, it explains the critical admiration that Pasini’s work inspired in a contemporary art critic, Virgilio Colombo, who noted how “Pasini faithfully reproduces the architectural accessories, which sparkle in the sun and bathe in the blue shadows: in this, he is unrivaled and shows extraordinary ingenuity to create huge paintings in small canvasses.”