Orientalist visual conventions were fully developed in Flanders by the 1390s

Evidence

On the right outer panel is featured a “presentation in the Temple” where a man, probably Joseph, is pictured wearing a turban. The high priest himself has a skullcap and a flowing white beard that could perhaps be read as “Jewish” and may have alluded to the artists’ living Jewish contemporaries. If so, then the high priest, modeled on contemporary European Jewish models, represents the older artistic tradition, and can be contrasted with the turbaned character, representing the new. What is most remarkable about the altarpiece is, in our context, the tower that rises on the outside of the scene, evidently representing the Holy Temple. It has a dome topping two levels of crenellations that may be interpreted as “oriental.” On top of the dome is—a crescent! Quite likely, the artists meant to represent a minaret. Their masterpiece is evidence that, in Flanders and Burgundy at the end of the fourteenth century, orientalism was already fully present. — Ivan Davidson Kalmar, Derek Penslar, Orientalism and the Jews, 174

Categorization

• SHARE: The crescent on top of the Holy Temple in the Dijon Altarpiece is a wonderfully concrete detail a medieval-art enthusiast would relish.