Book excerpt: This study aims to clarify Venetian Quattrocento Orientalism, which affected Durer and thus Northern Europe, and to define the sources and practitioners of its Oriental motifs. At the end of the fifteenth century a large number of paintings were produced in Venice that depict exotic animals and figures set against the backdrop of Oriental architecture. It was Europe's earliest attempt to portray Muslims in a Muslim habitat, but it was more than a vague and ill-informed evocation of the East. Realistic in many of their details, these Orientalist pictures reflect the Serenissima's political and mercantile links with the fifteenth century Islamic Empires of the Eastern Mediterranean.