I had always wondered why the portrait of one of the greatest Sultans of Ottoman history is displayed in Victoria and Albert Museum in London and how it got there.
The portrait was made by the Italian painter Gentile Bellini who had been invited to İstanbul by the Sultan himself to make his portrait in the 15th century after his conquest of the city of Constantinople. This was such a progressive move on the side of the Sultan as İslam forbids depiction of anything human or divine. But Fatih was a Renaissance man interested in art, world history and foreign languages. He wanted to make himself eternal as the conquerer of the city of Constantinople which had been the world’s desire for centuries.
We know that Bellini stayed in İstanbul for 16 months and made many portraits of the Sultan as well as decorating the walls of the Topkapı Palace harem with rather erotic paintings.
But the story took a different turn when Fatih Sultan Mehmet passed away and his son II. Bayezit became an heir to the throne. Being the pious man he was, one of the first things he did was to destroy his father’s harem with all the murals and sell all the portraits of his father in the covered bazaar. Historians say that Venetian merchants got a hold of these portraits through jewish merchants in İstanbul and brought them to Europe. Many of these portraits have either been lost or are currently in private collections but there is one that ended up in Victoria and Albert Museum.
We are lucky that İstanbul Municipality has decided to purchase another painting of Gentile Bellini depicting Fatih Sultan Mehmet and his son which was on sale in an auction at Christie’s The painting has finally returned home after centuries!
One can not stop wondering how history could have taken a different turn if Fatih Sultan Mehmet’s vision had dominated the Ottoman Empire rather than his son’s for centuries!
