スルタン・メフメト2世

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.