Muhammed's carpet moving from Mecca to Cairo

Muhammed's Carpet Moving from Mecca to Cairo, painted in 1875 and now in the National Gallery of Armenia, demonstrates the Orientalist strand of Makovsky's artistic interests that ran parallel to his historical Russian genre paintings. The ceremony of the mahmal — the ceremonial procession carrying the covering for the Kaaba from Egypt to Mecca and back — was one of the most spectacular events in the Islamic religious calendar and had fascinated European artists and travelers throughout the nineteenth century. Makovsky's engagement with this subject reflects the Orientalist movement that drew Russian as well as French, German, and British artists to depict Islamic religious and cultural practices as exotic spectacle. His access to Orientalist subject matter may have come from travels in the Caucasus and Central Asia, regions where the Russian empire was expanding its presence throughout the 1860s and 1870s.

Oil on canvas with the brilliant colorism that Makovsky deployed to maximum effect in Orientalist subjects. The visual richness of the depicted ceremony — embroidered textiles, gilded ornaments, crowds in varied dress — allowed him to indulge the same decorative virtuosity he brought to his historical Russian scenes.