Picturing Muslims: Gentile Bellini’s "The Sultan Mehmet II"
A number of early modern English plays that featured Muslim characters required actors to dress up in particular costumes in order to ‘perform’ Muslim identity. In previous posts on plays such as Thomas Kyd’s The Spanish Tragedy and Robert Daborne’s A Christian Turned Turk, I’ve shown how particular properties such as moustaches, turbans, and scimitars (swords) were used to create the image - typically the caricature - of Turkish Muslims. In other performances, 'Brown’ (“tawny”) and Black Muslim characters were enacted with the use of black cloths and cosmetic applications (producing performances of blackface and brownface). While these props and cosmetics were employed to create ‘pictures’ of “Turks” and “Moors” on the English stage, Muslims were appearing in different kinds of images, specifically in objects of visual culture, that were either being circulated or discussed in early modern England.
Today’s post is the first in a series of blogs where I’ll explore some of these well-known representations of Muslims that appear in early modern European and English visual culture, and consider how these images may have influenced or been influenced by the way Muslims were conceived, both in character and physical form, in sixteenth and seventeenth century England.
Gentile Bellini’s The Sultan Mehmet II (1480)
Bellini, Gentile. The Sultan Mehmet II. 1480, oil on canvas (19th century repaint), The National Gallery, London (currently on loan)
The Ottoman Sultan Mehmed II was a figure known throughout early modern Europe for famously leading the conquest of Constantinople, the capital of the Byzantine Empire, in 1453. This historic event changed the social and political dynamics in Europe and Asia, placing the Ottomans into a geographic position that would support their future economic and military endeavours.
Stories of the Sultan continued to be written and told in Europe long after his death in the fifteenth century. As scholars have shown, a folkloric tale of Mahomet’s affair with a Greek captive named Hiren circulated throughout Europe for centuries after the conquest. This tale reached England in the mid-sixteenth century via the writers of French and Italian novellas. In England the story was dramatised in George Peele’s now lost play, The Turkish Mahomet and Hiren the Fair Greek (1589?) and was later published by Richard Knolles in his The General Historie of the Turks (1603).
This famous portrait of Mehmed II by the famous Venetian artist Gentile Bellini was produced over a century before the Sultan was first portrayed on the English stage. Bellini was commissioned to paint the Sultan during a diplomatic visit to Constantinople undertaken in 1479, only a few years before Mehmed’s death. Bellini here portrays the Sultan as a man of a light skin colour with auburn hair, dressed in a red robe, and with a white turban and red cap.
Although the portrait is currently held in the collections of the National Gallery in London, the painting is unlikely to have reached England in its early years. Some art historians contend that the piece might have been sold to buyers in Europe following Mehmed’s death, and perhaps specifically to Venetians. Still, historical chronicles published in English in the late sixteenth century make interesting references to the painting which indicate that the early modern English, especially readers of these texts, were at least aware of the painting’s existence. The discussions of the painting printed in these texts, in turn, would have done some work to shape English conceptions of the Muslim Ottomans at the time.
One such text was The Historie of George Castriot, Surnamed Scanderbeg, King of Albanie (1596). In exploring Skanderbeg’s history, the text traced his “memorable victories against the Turkes”. Originally written by Marin Barleti, a Catholic priest from modern day Shkodra/Shkodër in Albany, and published in 1504, the history was translated into French by the lord Jacques de Lavardin, and then thereafter translated again from French into English by “Z.I. Gentleman”, whose copy of the text was eventually published in England near the end of the century.
The English translation of Barleti’s book includes a lengthy description of Mehmed, in which the writer speaks to the Sultan’s character and interests. He begins with demonising descriptions of the Ottoman, by observing that the ruler loved “bloudshed and cruelty, as much as any”, and “he did excell all men liuing in cruelty”, being possessed by qualities of “auarice and couetousnes” having “litle care of the bloud and life of his owne people” (Y1r-Y2r). However, Barleti proceeds to note with some admiration, that Mehmed II had a keen interest in various artistic forms, observing: “Hee did maruellously honor and esteeme those, which were skilfull in any Art or mystery whatsoeuer, and he tooke great care that his victories and conquestes might be written by learned men” (Y1v). As a writer of history himself, Barleti seems to show admiration here for how ‘marvellously’ the Sultan honoured and supported creatives and scholars.
In the context of this discussion on the Sultan’s cultural interests, Barleti mentions the portrait and offers some detail on its conception:
He [Mehmed II] gaue great rewardes vnto Gentill Belin a Painter of Venice, whom he caused purposely to come from thence to Constantinople, because he would haue his picture drawen as liuely and naturally as hee could by his art possibly: and because he should paint out the habites and fashions of the Occidentall nations (Y2r)
The reference to the painting here is in line with Barleti’s earlier description of the Sultan’s appreciation for artistic workmanship, historical knowledge, and empirical accuracy. The writer emphasises that the ‘purpose’ of Bellini’s visit was to produce the painting and that the image was “drawen as liuely and naturally” as possible. Barleti goes further to frame the Sultan’s interest in the portrait as a desire to draw from the “habites and fashions” from “the Occidentall” or European, Christian nations. Thus Barleti’s discussion of the painting highlights Mehmed’s general cultural appreciation while simultaneously using the opportunity to point towards the Great Sultan’s interest in the ‘Occident’.
Bellini’s painting is likewise referenced in Richard Knolles’ The General Historie of the Turkes (1603) which was published at the start of the seventeenth century. Knolles describes the painting in very similar terms to the earlier publication, and thus it seems likely that he adapted this history from Barleti, since Knolles also cites the earlier historian (“Marinus Barletius”) as one of the sources for his chronicle. Like Barleti, Knolles begins with a description of the Sultan’s cruelties before moving to a description of the Sultan’s appreciation for craft and skill:
The death of this mightie man (who liuing troubled a great part of the world) was not much more lamented by those that were neerest vnto him (who euer liuing in feare of his crueltie, hated him deadly) than of his enemies [...] He delighted much in reading of histories, and the liues of worthie men, especially the liues of Alexander the Great, and of Julius Caesar, whom he proposed to himselfe as examples to follow [...] Men that excelled in any qualitie, he greatly fauoured and honourably entertained: as he did Gentill Bellin, a painter of VENICE, whom he purposely caused to come from thence to CONSTANTINOPLE, to draw the liuely counterfeit of himselfe, for which he most bountifully rewarded him. (2P1r)
Like Barleti, Knolles observes the Ottoman’s reverence for history and portraiture, and the generosity which he showed towards those who “excelled in any qualitie”. However, the English writer takes a turn as he concludes his description with the observation that “these good parts were in him obscured with most horrible and notorious vices” (2P1r). Thus, for Knolles, Mehmed’s patronage of the arts is necessarily overshadowed by his innate tyranny.
Nonetheless, for both writers the painting seems to complicate their initial characterisations of the cruelty and greed of the Sultan, who commends and awards skilled labour. At the same time, the painting forms part of an opportunity to imply Europe’s cultural greatness, by demonstrating the fearsome and fascinating Ottoman ruler’s intrigue with the “fashions” emerging from the Christian “Occident”.
Moreover, although Barleti does not indicate having seen the painting himself, his reference to Bellini’s naturalistic portrait of the Sultan seems uncannily similar to his description of Mehmed’s appearance. This invites us to consider whether Barleti’s physical descriptions of Mehmed II had also been influenced by Bellini’s portrait, especially considering the writer’s emphasis on the naturalistic nature of the portrait. Barleti describes the appearance of Mehmed as being “pale of face and of a sallow complexion” with “eye browes hollow, and his nose so high and crooked, that the point thereof seemed to touch his lippes” (Y2r). Barleti’s description appears to match the essential physical features of Mehmed in the painting who harbours a “pale”, yellow-tinged face and a slightly bent nose which dips down to the top of his beard. The writer himself participated in the Albanian conflicts with the Ottomans in Shkodra in the 1470s, and in later years relocated to Venice, the home of the Bellini family workshop, where he lived for some time. With this in mind, it is tempting to consider the possibility that Barleti himself may have come into contact with the painting or engaged with others who had seen it first-hand.
If this was the case, then Knolles’ similar descriptions of Mehmed II as “Tartarlike, sallow and melancholie, as were most of his ancestours the Othoman kings” and with “his nose so high and crooked that it almost touched his vpper lip”, which seems to draw from Barleti, may too have been influenced by the historic painting (2P1r).
Whether or not the image informed how the early modern English visualised the Ottomans, the English certainly encountered Bellini’s painting by way of text, and by this means the portrait would have had some influence on their conceptions of the Ottoman Turk.
Further Reading:
If you’d like to learn more about this painting and other European portrayals of the Ottomans, here are some works that may be of interest to you:
The Turk and Islam in the Western Eye, 1450-1750: Visual Imagery Before Orientalism, ed. by James G. Harper (New York: Routledge Ashgate Publishing, 2011)
Rodini, Elizabeth, Gentile Bellini's Portrait of Sultan Mehmed II: Lives and Afterlives of an Iconic Image (London: I.B. Taurus, Bloomsbury, 2020)
References:
Knolles, Richard, The General Historie of the Turkes (London: 1603)
Barleti, Marin, The Historie of George Castriot, Surnamed Scanderbeg, King of Albanie, trans. by Z.I. Gentleman (London: 1596)
Images:
Header Image – Wikimedia, available at:
In-line Image – National Gallery, available at: <https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/gentile-bellini-the-sultan-mehmet-ii>
