Il sultano Mehmet II

In 1479 Venice and the Ottoman Empire finally made peace after 16 years of war, and Sultan Mehmed II, the conqueror of Constantinople, asked the Venetians to send him a good portrait painter. They sent Gentile Bellini, one of their finest, who travelled east and spent well over a year at the sultan's court. He painted this portrait there and dated it 15 November 1480. Mehmed sits behind a stone parapet under a rounded arch, framed almost like a Christian saint, his sharp profile set against a dark ground. The picture was badly damaged and heavily restored over the centuries, so much of the surface you see now is by later hands. Bellini also cast a bronze medal of the sultan while he was there, the only medal he is known to have made.