Renaissance Studies Vol. 28 No. 5 DOI: 10.1111/rest.

12059

Bellini, bronze and bombards: Sultan Mehmed II’s

requests reconsidered

Antonia Gatward Cevizli

Gentile Bellini’s Portrait of Mehmed II of 1480 (Fig. 1), has recently enjoyed
a considerable revival in its fortunes; previously consigned to the National
Gallery’s reserve collection for many years on account of its poor condition.1
It has even featured in a textbook of global history and in a multi-millennial
history of the Mediterranean.2 In some ways the attention accorded to
Bellini’s visit to Istanbul in 1479 is exaggerated; he was not the only Italian
artist to visit the Ottoman court in these years nor is there any evidence that
the sultan accorded him a greater significance. His prominent role in sub-
sequent historiography seems to result from the level of preserved docu-
mentation for his visit and the survival of both his painted portrait and his
portrait medal (Fig. 2) of the sultan. A re-assessment of the documents of
the Venetian Senate in 1479–80 will alter the perspective from which we
view this episode, giving Bellini a less central role and indicating that the
sultan’s military priorities – rather than simply enthusiasm for Italian art
forms – played a much greater part in the transactions of these years than
has been supposed.
Sixteen years of war between Venice and the Ottoman Empire came to an
official end on 25 January 1479. Mehmed soon took the opportunity to send
an envoy, a Jew named Simone, who arrived in Venice in August 1479 and
presented the requests that led to the loan of Bellini.3 As a result, the artist has
often been cast as a sort of cultural ambassador. The foreword to the catalogue
of the ‘Bellini and the East’ exhibition went so far as to claim that ‘it is no
exaggeration to say that Gentile Bellini played a significant role in bringing
the former adversaries closer together, and in fostering dialogue between the

I am very grateful to the Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation for sponsoring my research in the Archivio di Stato
in Venice and to the University of Warwick for a Postgraduate Research Scholarship.
1
The painting was heavily restored in the mid nineteenth century. See David Bomford, Conservation of
Paintings (London: National Gallery Publications, 1997), 48–50.
2
Felipe Fernandez-Armesto, The World: A History, in 2 vols. (Boston: Prentice Hall, 2011), Vol. 1, 416; David
Abulafia, The Great Sea: A Human History of the Mediterranean (London: Allen Lane, 2011), 388.
3
Marino Sanudo, Le vite dei dogi (1474–1494) ed. Angela Caracciolo Aricò, in 2 vols. (Padova: Antenore,
1989), Vol. 1, 149.

© 2014 The Society for Renaissance Studies and John Wiley & Sons Ltd
 Bellini, bronze and bombards: Sultan Mehmed II 749

Fig. 1 Gentile Bellini, Portrait of Mehmed II, 1480, oil on canvas, 70 x 52 cm, London, National Gallery (©
National Gallery, London)

Fig. 2 Designed by Gentile Bellini, Medal of Mehmed II, c.1480–81, bronze, diameter 9.4cm, London, Victoria
and Albert Museum (© Victoria and Albert Museum, London)
750 Antonia Gatward Cevizli
Christian and Islamic worlds’; arguably a reflection of the concerns and hopes
of our own age.4
The embellishment of Bellini’s position in the sultan’s eyes can be traced
back to the first published account of his visit by Jacopo Filippo Foresti da
Bergamo in 1490 – possibly produced in collaboration with the artist himself:

His talent one day reached the ears of Mehmed, Prince of the Turks, who
burning with desire of seeing him, wrote humbly to the Venetian Senate with a
request that it should as a great favour send [Gentile] to him in Istanbul as a gift.
When he arrived . . . in order that his entire art might be tested even further,
[Mehmed] required that he himself be rendered in his own form. And when the
emperor beheld the image so similar to himself, he admired the man’s powers
and said that he surpassed all other painters who ever existed. 5 (Jacopo Filippo
Foresti da Bergamo, Supplementum chronicarum).

Contrary to Foresti’s claims – which were subsequently taken up in a similar

vein by Vasari – there is no evidence that Bellini was asked for by name.6
Mehmed’s request for a painter is not noted in the records of the Senate but
in the writings of Marino Sanudo and Domenico Malipiero who both
recounted that the sultan had simply asked for ‘a good painter’ with Malipiero
noting the qualifier that the painter must ‘know how to make portraits’.7
The decision to meet Mehmed’s request for a portraitist by sending Gentile
Bellini is a significant one. The artist’s reputation has declined over the
centuries as he has faded into the shadow of his younger brother Giovanni
Bellini. At the time, however, it was Gentile who was engaged on the most
prestigious artistic commission of the day: the decoration of the Sala del
Maggior Consiglio in the Doge’s Palace (destroyed by fire in 1577). The Sen-
ate’s decision to re-assign this commission to Gentile’s brother Giovanni in
order to facilitate his mission to the sultan is a sign of the perceived impor-
tance of Mehmed’s request. Sanudo observed that Mehmed had requested ‘a
good painter’ and that he had been sent an ‘excellent’ painter, ‘the first
master in this land’.8 In selecting Gentile Bellini, the Republic demonstrated
its eagerness to not only satisfy the sultan’s request but to exceed it.
4
Anne Hawley and Charles Saumarez Smith in the foreword to Caroline Campbell and Alan Chong (eds.),
Bellini and the East (exhibition catalogue, Boston, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, 14 December 2005–26
March 2006; London, National Gallery, 12 April 2006–25 June 2006), (London: National Gallery, 2005), 6.
5
Jacopo Filippo Foresti da Bergamo cited in Alan Chong, ‘Gentile Bellini in Istanbul: Myths and Misunder-
standings’, in Bellini and the East, 106–29 (at 108).
6
Giorgio Vasari, Le vite de’ più eccellenti pittori, scultori e architettori nelle redazioni del 1550 e 1568, eds. Rosanna
Bettarini and Paola Barocchi, in 6 vols. (Firenze: Sansoni, 1966–1987), Vol. 3 (1971), 435–6.
7
Sanudo, Le vite, Vol. 1, 149: ‘uno bon pytor’; Domenico Malipiero, ‘Annali Veneti dall’anno 1457 al 1500’,
Archivio storico italiano, 7/1 (1843), 122–3: ‘un bon depentor che sapia retrazer’. See Elizabeth Rodini, ‘The
Sultan’s True Face?: Gentile Bellini, Mehmet II, and the Values of Verisimilitude’, in James G. Harper (ed.), The
Turk and Islam in the Western Eye, 1450–1750: Visual Imagery Before Orientalism (Farnham; Burlington VT: Ashgate,
2011), 21–40 (at 33) for the argument that the term retrazer should be interpreted in the broader sense of
painting after nature. However, in this instance the term most probably refers to portraits since Mehmed would
have expected an Italian artist to have painted in a naturalistic style.
8
Sanudo, Le vite, Vol. 1, 149: ‘optimo pytor’; ‘il primo maestro di questa Terra’.
 Bellini, bronze and bombards: Sultan Mehmed II 751
Whilst silent on the request for a painter, the senatorial documents record
a request dated to 13 August 1479 for a sculptor and bronze founder; Sanudo
also recorded that the sultan’s envoy had asked for a metal founder
(‘butametalli’).9 The Senate voted unanimously to meet this request and to
find a superior metalworker, echoing Sanudo’s account of the choice of an
‘excellent’ painter.10 The Paduan sculptor Bartolomeo Bellano was selected.
Bellano’s reputation has been clouded by the unfortunate epithet of
‘ineptus artifex’ that he received from Pomponio Gaurico in 1504.11 However,
Gaurico’s opinion was not one that was universally held. On the contrary, it
was because Bellano enjoyed great renown for the many prestigious commis-
sions that he had executed in Florence, Rome, Perugia and Padua that he was
considered a suitable candidate to meet the Senate’s decision to send the
sultan a superior metalworker. Later in the sixteenth century Vasari offered
high praise for Bellano, describing him as the heir to Donatello and noting
that his work in the Santo in Padua could easily be mistaken for that of the
Florentine master.12 He went on to describe the ‘very great fame and renown’
of Bellano and the esteem in which his skills in metal founding were held.13
The decision to appoint such a well-regarded artist as Bellano finds a
parallel in Bellini’s assignment to the mission, indicating the high level of
significance that the Republic attached to both of Mehmed’s requests.
However, the equal importance of both missions has not been reflected in the
historiography; one example of the extent to which Bellano has been eclipsed
by Bellini is that the catalogue of the ‘Bellini and the East’ exhibition devoted
only one sentence to the Paduan.
It should be acknowledged that the neglect of Bellano is in no small part
due to the fact that attempts to reconstruct his visit to the Ottoman court are
hindered by the lack of any surviving works made by him in Istanbul. Franz
Babinger even doubted whether Bellano had departed, citing Mehmed’s
second request for a bronze founder in January 1480 as evidence that he was
yet to receive one.14 Julian Raby argued persuasively that Bellano did go to
Istanbul citing his will, drawn up on 7 September 1479, in which he stated that
9
Archivio di Stato di Venezia (hereafter ASV), Senato Terra, reg. 8 (1478–83), fol. 58r: ‘Qui vehementer
instat habere unum sculptorem et funditorem eris’. See also Jürg Meyer zur Capellen, Gentile Bellini (Stuttgart:
Steiner Verlag Wiesbaden, 1985), 110; Sanudo, Le vite, Vol. I, 157.
10
ASV, Senato Terra, reg. 8 (1478–83), fol. 58r: ‘qui prestantior et sufficentior haberi possit’. See also
Meyer zur Capellen, Gentile Bellini, 110.
11
Pomponio Gaurico, De Sculptura, ed. and trans. Paolo Cutolo (Napoli: Edizioni scientifiche Italiane, 1999),
254.
12
Vasari, Vol. 3 (1971), 321–4 (at 321): ‘che rimase in Padova sua patria erede della virtù di Donatello
fiorentino, come ne dimostrano l’opere sue nel Santo; dalle quali, pensando quasi ognuno che non ha di ciò
cognizione intera ch’elle siano di Donato, se non sono avvertiti restano tutto giorno ingannati.’ Vasari referred
to him as Vellano.
13
Ibid., 322–3: ‘con grandissimo nome e fama’; ‘Fu bene stimato e pregiato assai et in Padova, e per tutta la
Lombardia e dalla Signoria di Vinegia . . . perchè nel fondere i metalli per la lunghissima pratica valeva un
mondo.’
14
Franz Babinger, Mehmed the Conqueror and his Time, ed. William C. Hickman, trans. Ralph Manheim,
Bollingen Series 96 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978), 378.
752 Antonia Gatward Cevizli
he was about to depart (‘iturus sim Constantinopolim’).15 The galley arrange-
ments reveal that Bellini travelled with two of his own assistants and two
assistants of Bellano.16 Whether Bellano travelled on the same galley or fol-
lowed on a later boat is not known. The firmest indication that Bellano did
reach the Ottoman court is to be found in Mehmed’s second request for an
accomplished (‘sotil’) bronze founder in which he stated that he should be
‘like the one that was sent previously or even better’.17 The Senate’s response
provides compelling evidence that Bellano had been dispatched: they noted
that the first bronze founder that they had sent was ‘very famous’.18
Gaurico’s damning judgement of Bellano some years after the artist’s death
in c.1496–1497 reflects a shift in taste in favour of the classicizing style of
Severo da Ravenna and Andrea Riccio, whom he admired. Gaurico’s com-
ments continue to exert an influence; Howard Collins expressed reservations
as to whether the ‘uncouth style’ of Bellano would have satisfied the Signoria’s
concern for excellence.19 However, as we have seen above, there is no reason
to doubt that in 1479 the Senate regarded Bellano highly. Raby interpreted
Mehmed’s second request for a bronze founder as evidence of his ability to
cast a discriminating eye on Italian art.20
Mehmed had asked for a founder ‘like the one that was sent previously or
even better’. It is the words ‘or even better’ that have called Bellano’s talents
into question. It may simply be understood as Mehmed’s desire to ensure that
he was sent the very best that Venice had to offer or it could relate to the range
of objects that the founder had experience of casting, rather than to the
artist’s individual style. It should be noted that Mehmed cannot have been
significantly displeased with the founder’s services or he would not have asked
for another ‘like the one that was sent previously’.
Mehmed’s request gave no indication of what the founder was expected to
produce in the Ottoman capital. The fact that there are no known works by
Bellano from this period is not necessarily a sign that he never arrived at the
Ottoman court but could suggest that he was assigned tasks that focused on his
abilities in casting as opposed to those of design. It has been suggested that
Bellano may have cast the medal designed by Bellini.21 This is a possibility but

15
Julian Raby, ‘Pride and Prejudice: Mehmed the Conqueror and the Italian Portrait Medal’, Studies in the
History of Art, 21 (1987), 171–94 (at 183–4); ASV, Notarile-Testamenti, b. 718 (Francesco Malipede), no. 41. See
also Gustav Ludwig, Archivalische Beiträge zur Geschichte der venezianischen Kunst (Berlin: B. Cassirer, 1911), 12.
16
ASV, Notatorio del Collegio, reg. 12 (1474–1481), fol. 106r. See also Meyer zur Capellen, Gentile Bellini,
110–11.
17
ASV, Liber Graecus, fol. 9r: ‘come quello ne mandò la Excellentia Vostra per avanti; over ancora meior de
quello’. See also Raby ‘Pride and Prejudice’, 188.
18
ASV, Senato, Deliberazioni Secreta, reg. 29 (1479–1480), fols. 82r-v (new foliation fols. 92r-v): ‘assai
famoxo in queste nostre parte’. See also Raby ‘Pride and Prejudice’, 188.
19
Howard Collins, ‘Gentile Bellini: A Monograph and Catalogue of Works’ (PhD dissertation, University of
Pittsburgh, 1970), 13.
20
Raby ‘Pride and Prejudice’, 184.
21
Stefano Carboni, trans. Deke Dusinberre (eds.), Venice and the Islamic World 828–1797 (exhibition cata-
logue, l’Institut du monde arabe, Paris, 2 October 2006–18 February 2007; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New
 Bellini, bronze and bombards: Sultan Mehmed II 753
it is unlikely that this would have been the sole occupation intended for
Bellano since there would have been other founders in Mehmed’s service
capable of casting medals.
Bellini’s occupation at the Ottoman court is much clearer. The written
accounts of a Vicentine captive at the Ottoman court, Giovanni Maria
Angiolello, and the annals of Malipiero inform us that he was charged with
producing a likeness of Mehmed, which is corroborated by Bellini’s surviving
portraits. Obtaining a portrait from an Italian artist was a long-standing wish
of the sultan. Almost twenty years earlier, in 1461, Sigismondo Pandolfo
Malatesta, lord of Rimini had agreed to loan Mehmed the services of his court
artist Matteo De’ Pasti; plans that were thwarted by Venetian officers who had
intercepted and arrested the artist in Crete on account of his suspicious gifts
of a map(s) and a military treatise. Malatesta’s correspondence with the sultan
sheds some light on the appeal of Western portrait modes for Mehmed. The
letter highlighted the capacity of a portrait to give its subject immortality and
went on to draw an explicit parallel between the sultan’s interest in portraiture
and that of Alexander the Great, playing to Mehmed’s well-known desire to
emulate the hero of his history lessons.22 Malatesta recalled Alexander’s
painted portraits by Apelles and bronze portraits by Lysippus. The media in
which Mehmed’s portraits were subsequently made – both painted and in
bronze – suggests that they should be understood within the context of the
promotion of the Alexander analogy.
Angiolello’s description of Mehmed’s relationship with Bellini echoes the
cordial friendship between Alexander and Apelles as recorded in Pliny.23 We
are told that the sultan addressed Bellini by his first name and encouraged
him to speak freely: ‘Gentile you know that I have always told you that you can
speak to me, as long as you tell the truth and tell me what you think.’24 Given
his proficiency in the Turkish language we can speculate that Angiolello may
have been present on this occasion acting as an interpreter.25 However, the
close similarity to Pliny’s account suggests that this is more than an eyewitness
report. Angiolello may have employed a Plinian trope in order to make an
implicit comparison for an Italian audience between Mehmed’s patronage of

York, 26 March 2007–8 July 2007; Palazzo Ducale, Venice, 28 July 2007–25 November 2007), (New York: The
Metropolitan Museum of Art; New Haven CT; London: Yale University Press, 2007), 331.
22
Malatesta’s letter transcribed in Raby, ‘Pride and Prejudice’, 187. For discussion of Mehmed’s admiration
of Alexander, see Gülru Necipoğlu, ‘Visual Cosmopolitanism and Creative Translation: Artistic Conversations
with Renaissance Italy in Mehmed II’s Constantinople’, in Muqarnas, 29 (2012), 1–81 (at 6–10).
23
Pliny the Elder, The Elder Pliny’s Chapters on the History of Art, trans. K. Jex-Blake, 2nd American edn. (1896;
repr. Chicago: Ares, 1976), 125 (Book XXXV, 85–7).
24
Donado da Lezze, Historia turchesca 1300–1514, ed. I. Ursu (Bucureşti: C. Göbl, 1909), 121: ‘Gentil tu sai
che sempre t’ho detto, che tu puoi parlar con me, pur che tu dica la verità, si che dimmi quello che ti pare.’ The
Historia turchesca is generally attributed to Angiolello.
25
For Angiolello’s knowledge of Turkish, see Pierre Mackay, ‘The Content and Authorship of the Historia
Turchesca’, in İstanbul Üniversitesi 550. yıl, Uluslararası Bizans ve Osmanlı Sempozyumu (XV. yüzyıl): 30–31 Mayıs
2003/550th anniversary of Istanbul University, International Byzantine and Ottoman Symposium (XVth century): 30–31
May 2003, ed. Sümer Atasoy (Istanbul: Istanbul Üniversitesi, 2004), 213–23 (214).
754 Antonia Gatward Cevizli
Bellini and Alexander’s patronage of Apelles.26 It is also possible that Pliny’s
account provided the sultan – who was well versed in the accounts of the life
of Alexander – with a model of behaviour towards his artists.
The portrait medal would have particularly appealed to Mehmed both as a
means of promoting the Alexander analogy and to emphasize his imperial
status. Pisanello’s medal of John VIII Palaeologus – which Mehmed probably
knew – drew on the legacy of imperial coinage, appropriate for the Byzantine
emperor as inheritor of the Eastern Roman Empire. When Mehmed gained
possession of Constantinople, he added Caesar, Emperor of the Romans
(‘Kayser-i Rum’) to his collection of titles and set about transforming the city
into his own imperial capital.
We can only speculate on how Mehmed intended to use the portraits since
there is no documentary evidence. However, as Raby noted, portrait medals
belonged to the private domain, which would have been an advantage given
the sensitivity of Istanbul’s Muslim population to the public display of figural
imagery.27 Mehmed’s son Bayezid II disapproved of the paintings commis-
sioned by his father and Angiolello reported that he sold them in the bazaar.28
X-ray photographs of Bellini’s portrait reveal that no trace of the original
painting of the face has remained (Fig. 3) whilst the turban, textile and arch
and crowns are visible.29 Such localized damage on the face alone suggests a
deliberate iconoclastic act. In order to make an offending image inanimate, it
was typical to destroy only the facial area. A later example of Ottoman icono-
clasm can be seen in a manuscript of the Şemailname of 1579, held in the
Victoria and Albert Museum, in which the faces of the sultans have been
repainted having been destroyed at some point.30
The portraits themselves also strongly suggest that their intended audience
was Western. The Latin inscriptions on both Bellini’s painting and his medal
address a European reader and inform them of the sultan’s appropriate titles.
Mehmed had previously demonstrated a concern for the titles used to
describe him in Venice; Malipiero recounted in April 1479 that during the
Ottoman ambassador’s visit a proclamation was issued that on pain of death
nobody was to call him the ambassador of the Turk, but the ambassador of the
Signor.31 Bellini’s medal bears the even grander title of MAGNI SOULTANI
MOHAMETI IMPERATORIS (Of Great Sultan Mehmed, Emperor).
26
For discussion of the borrowing of anecdotes from Pliny, see Sarah Blake McHam, Pliny and the Artistic
Culture of the Renaissance: The Legacy of the Natural History (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2013),
106–9.
27
Raby, ‘Pride and Prejudice’, 185.
28
Donado da Lezze, Historia turchesca, 121. For an inventory of heathen objects which included pictures that
were to be dispersed, see J. M. Rogers, ‘An Ottoman Palace Inventory of the Reign of Bayazid II’, in Jean-Louis
Bacqué and Emeri van Donzel (eds.), Comité international d’études pré-ottomanes et ottomanes, VIth Symposium
(Istanbul: Divit Press, 1987), 40–53 (46).
29
National Gallery Archive, London, Dossier 3099.
30
London, National Art Library, Victoria and Albert Museum, MSL/1876/682.
31
Malipiero, ‘Annali Veneti’, 122: ‘E sta’ fatto un proclama, che alcun in la Terra no ardissa de chiamarlo
Ambassador del Turco, ma Ambassador del Signor, sotto pena della vita.’
 Bellini, bronze and bombards: Sultan Mehmed II 755

Fig. 3 X-ray photograph of Gentile Bellini, Portrait of Mehmed II, 1480, London, National Gallery Archive,
Dossier 3099 (© National Gallery, London)

Medals may have been used by Mehmed in much the same way as they were
in the rest of fifteenth-century Europe. It has been convincingly argued that
during the Ottoman envoy’s visit to Florence in March 1480, Lorenzo de’
Medici was presented with the gift of a medal designed by Bellini and that this
served as the prototype for the medal of Mehmed by Bertoldo di Giovanni
(Fig. 4) who had never seen the sultan.32 The close resemblance of the medals
supports the argument that a medal by Bellini was issued in Istanbul, a
possibility that has been questioned in favour of a later production in Venice
to feed the fascination for images of the deceased sultan.33 These arguments
are not mutually exclusive; Costanzo da Ferrara’s medal of Mehmed is known
through a unique example believed to have been made in Istanbul and the
other version, of which several survive, was made upon his return to Italy.
Further evidence that the medal and the painting were directed towards
European eyes can be found in the inclusion of crowns, a Western symbol of
32
Emil Jacobs, ‘Die Mehemmed-Medaille des Bertoldo’, Jahrbuch der preußischen Kunstsammlungen, 48 (1927),
1–17; Raby ‘Pride and Prejudice’, 182; James David Draper, Bertoldo di Giovanni, Sculptor of the Medici Household:
Critical Reappraisal and Catalogue Raisonné (Columbia; London: University of Missouri Press, 1992) 97–101.
33
Campbell and Chong (eds.), Bellini and the East, 74–6.
756 Antonia Gatward Cevizli

Fig. 4 Bertoldo di Giovanni, Medal of Mehmed II, 1480, bronze, diameter 9.4 cm, London, Victoria and Albert
Museum (© Victoria and Albert Museum, London)

kingship.34 The employment of three crowns on the reverse of Bellini’s medal

suggests that they were employed by Bellini as a sort of heraldic device that was
repeated on either side of the painting. Such a device would most probably
have been understood as a reference to three realms by Europeans familiar
with the three crowns of the Swedish royal coat of arms or indeed to the Papal
triregnum.35 Bellini’s triple crowns are likely to represent Greece, Trebizond
and Asia, which are spelt out by name in Bertoldo’s medal.36 It has been
suggested that the seven crowns – including that which is embroidered on the
fabric – signify Mehmed’s position in the Ottoman dynasty.37 However, viewers
are unlikely to have responded to the painting by counting the details and
making such symbolic links. A portrait of Mehmed, probably made in Venice
in c.1510 (Fig. 5) and based on Bellini’s painted portrait – which had probably
reached the city by that time – offers further evidence that the crowns were not
understood as a reference to Mehmed’s dynastic position.38 The portrait
faithfully reproduced the pair of three crowns but in omitting the embroi-
dered cloth lost the seventh crown.
34
Serpil Bağcı’s catalogue entry for Bellini’s medal in. David J. Roxburgh (ed.), Turks: A Journey of a Thousand
Years, 600–1600 (exhibition catalogue, Royal Academy of Arts, London, 22 January 2005–12 April 2005),
(London: Royal Academy of Arts, 2005), 433.
35
Gülru Necipoğlu, Architecture, Ceremonial and Power: The Topkapı Palace in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries
(New York: Architectural History Foundation; Cambridge MA; London: MIT Press, 1991), 210 observed that the
emblem resonated with Ottoman rhetoric since Mehmed seems to have given visual expression to his conquests
in the three pavilions he had constructed in the palace grounds in the modes of the conquered territories.
36
Alfred Armand, Les médailleurs italiens des quinzième et seizième siècles, in 3 vols. (Paris: E. Plon, 1883–87), Vol.
1 (1883), 78 interpreted the crowns as a reference to Constantinople, Trebizond and Konya.
37
Maria Pia Pedani Fabris, ‘Simbologia ottomana nell’opera di Gentile Bellini’, Atti dell’Istituto Veneto di
Scienze, Lettere ed Arti: classe di scienze morali, lettere ed arti, 155 (1996–1997), 1–29 (at 22–5).
38
Bellini’s portrait was perhaps retouched on arrival in Venice. For discussion of the anonymous portrait see
Carboni (ed.), Venice and the Islamic World 828–1797, 303–4.
 Bellini, bronze and bombards: Sultan Mehmed II 757

Fig. 5 Venetian (based on Gentile Bellini), Portrait of Mehmed II, c.1510, oil on canvas, 21 x 16 cm, Doha,
Museum of Islamic Art, (PA. 10) (© Museum of Islamic Art, Doha)

It can be assumed that by requesting an Italian artist Mehmed wanted a

naturalistic likeness and expected to be depicted in the mode of an Italian
ruler. Bellini followed the conventions of dogal portraiture and distanced the
sultan from the viewer by a parapet draped with a cloth and framed him with
an arch reminiscent of the classicizing portals found in Venice at the time.39
Kritovoulos emphasized the value that the Greek language – as opposed to
Arabic or Persian – would confer on his written account of Mehmed’s life,
stating that the great renown of the Greek language would make it ‘become
the common pride and wonder, not of Greeks alone, but of all western
nations’.40 Perhaps Mehmed was aware of the similar benefit of being repre-
sented according to the Italian visual language that would have been under-
stood by viewers from Christian Europe.
Alexander the Great had also recognized the power of adapting one’s mode
of expression to different audiences. In the Anabasis, Arrian had described
how Alexander had adopted elements of Persian dress and certain customs
39
Precedents for the format of Bellini’s portrait of Mehmed include Gentile Bellini’s Portrait of Doge Niccol ò
Marcello, after 1474 now known through a copy held in the National Gallery, London; a portrait of Doge Andrea
Vendramin, his secretary and the papal legate by a member of Gentile Bellini’s circle, Museum Boymans Van
Beuningen, Rotterdam and a fifteenth-century miniature depiction of a doge behind an arch with a carpet
draped over the ledge, Venice, Biblioteca del Museo Correr, MS Cicogna 2783.
40
Kritovoulos of Imbros, History of Mehmed the Conqueror, trans. Charles T. Riggs (1954; repr. Westport CT:
Greenwood Press, 1970), 4.
758 Antonia Gatward Cevizli
when presenting himself to a Persian audience in order that he ‘did not seem
completely foreign to them’.41 The ancient example of Alexander’s cultural
strategies would have resonated with the concerns of Mehmed as ruler of a
multi-ethnic empire with far-reaching contacts.42 Mehmed was portrayed in
different idioms according to the intended audience; the sultan’s Italian
portraits communicate in a visual language that would be familiar and readily
understood in the West.43
Raby explained Mehmed’s repeated requests for bronze founders as indica-
tive of his ‘prodigious appetite for medals and perhaps other forms of
sculpture’, but also considered the momentum of those requests to be ‘bewil-
dering’.44 In the years 1479–80 Mehmed made a number of requests for
bronze founders and directed his appeals not only to Venice but also to
Florence and had perhaps previously made a request to Naples. The appeal
that the portrait medal would have held for Mehmed has been outlined above
but this alone cannot explain the urgency and geographical scope of his
search for bronze founders in these years.
Mehmed made simultaneous requests for bronze founders to Venice and
Florence in 1480. According to the Venetian senatorial documents discussed
above, Mehmed had made a second request for a bronze founder in 1480 as
well as for a master builder and painter; the Duke of Milan’s agent in Venice
stated that the request had been for three bronze founders and for examples
of bronze statues.45 The Cronica of the Florentine merchant and spy Benedetto
Dei, recorded that Mehmed made requests to Florence in March 1480 for
‘masters of carving and of wood and of intarsia . . . and masters in bronze
sculpture’.46 According to Dei, Mehmed’s requests for artisans were met. This
was most probably a gesture of gratitude on the part of Lorenzo de Medici for
the sultan’s assistance in the recent arrest of his brother’s assassin, Bernardo
Bandini, who had fled to Istanbul.

41
Alexander the Great: Selections from Arrian, Diodorus, Plutarch, and Quintus Curtius, ed. James Romm, trans.
James Romm and Pamela Mensch (Indianapolis: Hackett, 2005), 172 (Arrian VII. 28).
42
The parallels with Arrian’s account were noted in Antonia Gatward Cevizli, ‘Beyond Bellini: Aspects of
Italian-Ottoman Cultural Exchange 1453–1512’,( PhD dissertation, University of Warwick, 2011), 98 and 300
and Necipoğlu, ‘Visual Cosmopolitanism and Creative Translation’, 36.
43
For discussion of the dissemination of Mehmed’s imperial image to both European and Persianate courts
see Gülru Necipoğlu, ‘The Serial Portraits of Ottoman Sultans in Comparative Perspective’, in Selmin Kangal
(ed.), The Sultan’s Portrait: Picturing the House of Osman (exhibition catalogue, Topkapı Palace Museum, Istanbul,
6 June–6 September 2000), (Istanbul: Işbank, 2000), 22–61 (29).
44
Raby, ‘Pride and Prejudice’, 180.
45
Ibid., 179: ‘tre magistri da zittare e statue di bronzo delli più excellenti la possi havere.’
46
Benedetto Dei, La cronica dall’anno 1400 all’anno 1500, ed. Roberto Barducci, Fonti e studi, 1 (Firenze:
Papafava, 1984), 176: ‘E chiese e adimandò la signorìa de’ Fiorentini di maestri di intaglio e di legname e di
tarsìe, e adimandò e Fiorentini di maestri di scholture di bronzo.’ Dei dated these events to March 1479
according to the Florentine calendar. Raby suggested that Mehmed may have been planning to build a pavilion
in the Italian mode in anticipation of his victory in Otranto and that this could explain why he was attempting
to gather a range of artists, builders and craftsmen from Italy at his court; see Julian Raby, ‘El Gran Turco:
Mehmed the Conqueror as a Patron of the Arts of Christendom’, (PhD dissertation, Oxford University, 1980),
298.
 Bellini, bronze and bombards: Sultan Mehmed II 759
Mehmed had also approached King Ferrante of Naples, probably in 1477 or
1478, and had been loaned the services of the artist Costanzo da Ferrara who
produced a medal of the sultan.47 The sole documentary record of a request
made by Mehmed to the King of Naples is a letter dated August 1485 from the
Ferrarese envoy to Naples to Eleanora of Aragon, Duchess of Ferrara, which
records simply that Costanzo had been sent to the sultan ‘some years ago
now’.48 Since we do not have the same degree of documentation for Naples as
we have for Venice, we cannot rule out the possibility that Mehmed’s request
to Naples followed a similar pattern to that made to Venice and that he may
also have asked for a bronze founder. If we were reliant on Malipiero’s Annali
Veneti alone, we would only know that the sultan had requested a painter from
Venice.49
Whilst Florence sent the sultan his desired artisans, the Venetian Senate’s
response to Mehmed’s second request was less diligent than it had been the
first time. The Senate instructed their ambassador, Niccolò Cocco, that they
were unable to meet the sultan’s requests since the master builder, who had
agreed to go to Istanbul, had since been taken seriously ill, a bronze founder
could not be found, and a painter called Bernardo would not go as he had
begun many commissions, which he was obliged to complete having already
been paid.50 Cocco was asked to excuse this three-fold failure to meet the
sultan’s requests and to ensure that the sultan understood that Venice had
sincerely done all that it could to satisfy him.51
Cocco’s main mission – accompanied by the secretary of the Senate,
Giovanni Dario – was not to respond to the sultan’s requests but to resolve
Venice’s grievance that its former territories had not been restored to the
Republic as per the terms of the peace treaty ratified by Venice in March
1479.52 Isolated extracts of documents which talk of peace and friendship can
give a misleading idea of the complex nature of relations between Venice and
the Porte at this time. On 17 April 1480, the very day when instructions were
given to Cocco for his mission, the Senate discussed reports of the daily
looting by Turks, specifically citing the example of the Venetian colony of
Kotor (Italian: Cattaro) and its hinterland, which had been raided and sacked

47
Costanzo’s visit has been ascribed to two distinct periods of peaceful relations between Naples and the
Ottomans; Raby, ‘Pride and Prejudice’, 178 proposed 1464–71 or 1475–8; Maria Andaloro, ‘Costanzo da
Ferrara: gli anni a Costantinopoli alla corte di Maometto II’, Storia dell’arte, 38–40 (1980), 189 favoured early
1478 as the time of Costanzo’s departure. Costanzo’s medals would seem most likely to depict the sultan in his
mid-forties rather than his mid-thirties suggesting that Costanzo was at the Ottoman court in the late 1470s.
48
Adolfo Venturi, ‘Costanzo medaglista e pittore’, Archivio storico dell’arte, 4 (January–February 1891), 374–5:
‘Et è quello che mandò già più anni la Maesta del Signore Re al gran Turcho quando li richiedetj gli mandasse
uno pictore de quelli dal Canto di qua . . .’
49
Malipiero, ‘Annali Veneti’, 123.
50
ASV, Senato, Deliberazioni Secreta, reg. 29 (1479–1480) fol. 92r (new foliation 102r). See also Raby ‘Pride
and Prejudice’, 188 and 192; Raby speculated that the artist may have been Bernardo Parentino.
51
ASV, Senato, Deliberazioni Secreta, reg. 29 (1479–1480), fol. 92r (new foliation 102r). See also Raby ‘Pride
and Prejudice’, 188.
52
ASV, Senato, Deliberazioni Secreta, reg. 29 (1479–1480), fols. 90r–91v (new foliation 100r–101v).
760 Antonia Gatward Cevizli
by Turks even after peace had been concluded.53 The extent of the problem
is expressed in the Senate’s statement that the citizens of the Venetian towns
in Dalmatia need to understand and know the difference between war and
peace.54 The sorry state of affairs is summed up in the Senate’s instructions to
Cocco to draw out of this bad situation (‘questo male’) all that he could for
the Venetians.55 Given that so much was still in the balance, Venice would have
had good reason not to instantly oblige Mehmed’s requests.
The excuses provided by the Senate to Cocco have been accepted at face
value, yet one phrase in particular indicates that the Senate’s claims should be
approached with caution: ‘a founder cannot be found, as you know’.56 The
Senate had informed Mehmed that ‘if we have in all our dominion another
bronze founder, we will send him immediately’, but soon reported that their
search had been unsuccessful.57 Venice’s bronze industry had been active for
many years and there were various foundries throughout the city both state-
financed and private.58 Thus the idea that Venice had to search its dominion
for a bronze founder in 1480 and that such a search should prove fruitless is
impossible to sustain. The ‘as you know’ part of the Senate’s statement indi-
cates that in a previous undocumented discussion a decision had been made
to refuse the sultan’s request. The Senate had previously stated its willingness
to do anything proper and reasonable to please Mehmed; perhaps a second
request for a bronze founder was not deemed to be so.59
Documents in the Venetian Archives permit us to identify individual found-
ers operating at this time. Bellano’s primary heir named in his will, drawn up
prior to his departure for Istanbul, directs us to a founder, Francesco fu
Alberto di Conti.60 This Francesco fu Alberto di Conti’s own will a few years
later in 1485 seems to direct us to another founder, a master Antonio Rossetto
who was renting a furnace.61 In addition, there were also Venetian medallists
such as Vittore Gambello, who is thought to have been born c.1455–60 and is
known to have cast medals before 1484, or the medallist who signed as G. T.
53
Ibid., fol. 90v (new foliation fol. 100v): ‘le rapine comesse e che ogni dì cometteno in desolatio del pacti
nostri territorij.’
54
Ibid., fol. 91v (new foliation fol. 101v): ‘che li subditi nostri intendino e cognoscino che differetia e dala
guerra ala pace.’
55
ASV, Senato, Deliberazioni Secreta, reg. 29 (1479–1480), fol. 91v (new foliation fol. 101v): ‘ma trar de
questo male quel più bene sia possible.’
56
Ibid., fol. 92r (new foliation 102r): ‘Fondator non si trova como sai’. See also Raby ‘Pride and Prejudice’,
188.
57
Ibid., fols. 82r-v: ‘Et se nui havessamo in tuto el dominio nostro uno altro fundator, lo mandessamo
subitamente.’ See also Raby, ‘Pride and Prejudice’, 188.
58
Victoria Avery, Vulcan’s Forge in Venus’ City: The Story of Bronze in Venice 1350-1650 (Oxford; New York:
Oxford University Press, 2011), 23–43.
59
ASV, Senato, Deliberazioni Secreta, reg. 29 (1479–1480), fols. 82r-v: ‘in tute quelle cosse conveniente et
raxonevelle’. See also Raby, ‘Pride and Prejudice’, 188.
60
Ludwig, Archivalische Beiträge, 12; from Francesco fu Alberto di Conti’s own will of 1485 we learn that he was
a ‘chalderer’ or copper founder. Copper and bronze founders were referred to interchangeably by both
Mehmed and the Senate.
61
ASV, Notarile-Testamenti, b. 36 (Manfredi Troilo), fasc. ‘Troilus de Manfredis 168 II’, no. 6, fols. 8v-11r
(old pagination fols. 222–7).
 Bellini, bronze and bombards: Sultan Mehmed II 761
F. – possibly Girolamo Todeschini, who was active in 1480.62 Had Venice
indeed searched its whole dominion, an extensive dynasty of founders – the
Conti family – could have been found in Padua.63
Many of the other founders that are documented were cannon founders.
One of the city’s most skilled and experienced founders was Bartolomeo da
Cremona, who held the post of chief gun founder in the Arsenal from 1463
until his death in 1487.64 Although Bartolomeo da Cremona himself would
have been rather advanced in age in 1480, he would certainly have had a
number of experienced assistants. Another highly regarded maker of bom-
bards active in Venice at the same time was Francesco di Antonio Campanato,
who would also have had trained assistants.65
The possible candidates that have been proposed here – in what is by no
means an exhaustive list – serve to demonstrate that the Venetian Senate
could have located a founder without much difficulty, confirming the implau-
sibility of their excuse. It should be acknowledged that many of these founders
may not have wanted to make the journey east. Nevertheless, it would be
surprising if not one founder in the whole of the Veneto were willing to accept
such a prestigious and, we may assume, lucrative mission. Furthermore, if that
were the case we might expect the Senate to have recorded it; they explained
the reasons why the painter Bernardo did not want to leave Venice. No
concrete reason is provided to explain why a founder could not be found.
Instead we are left with the tantalizing aside ‘as you know’.
It must have been of concern for the Senate that a bronze founder’s casting
skills could be applied to a range of objects from bells and sculptures to the
most advanced weaponry of the day.66 Furthermore, the importing of found-
ers from elsewhere was the principal way in which skilled founders were
recruited as well as being a route for the transmission of technological exper-
tise.67 This practice was common among the Italian states; the gun founder
Bartolomeo da Cremona had previously been working in Bosnia and another
renowned gun founder, Maestro Ferlino, had been in the service of the Duke
of Savoy and then of Filippo Maria Visconti and Francesco Sforza in Milan

62
For Girolamo Todeschini and Vittore Gambello, see George F. Hill, A Corpus of Italian Medals of the
Renaissance before Cellini, in 2 vols. (1930; repr. Florence: Studio per Edizioni Scelte, 1984), Vol. 1, 114–5.
63
Andrea Calore, Contributi donatelliani, Centro studi antoniani, 23, (Padova: Centro Studi Antoniani, 1996),
see especially 19–23. Andrea Conti, the founder that cast all of Donatello’s wax models for the Santo, had died
in 1467 leaving behind many relatives who were bronze workers.
64
For Bartolomeo da Cremona’s position in 1464, see ASV, Senato Terra, reg. 5 (1462–1467), fol.90v; for
Alberghetto Alberghetti’s appointment in March 1487, see Venice, Biblioteca del Museo Civico Correr, MS
Codice Cicogna 3412, ‘Famiglie Venete e Forestiere A’, fasc. ‘Famiglia Alberghetti’ fol.1r (if folios were
numbered). For Bartolomeo da Cremona’s skill and experience, see ASV, Senato Terra, reg. 5 (1462–1467),
fols. 47r, 166v and 177r.
65
Ibid., fol. 49v.
66
Avery, Vulcan’s Forge in Venus’ City, 51 cites the example of a gun founder producing both bells and artillery.
67
Gábor Ágoston, Guns for the Sultan: Military Power and the Weapons Industry in the Ottoman Empire (Cambridge;
New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 192.
762 Antonia Gatward Cevizli
prior to being captured by the Venetians in 1452.68 In 1480, having already
benefited from experts from elsewhere themselves, the Senate would have
been aware that Venetian bronze founders could have been a considerable
asset in Mehmed’s foundry.
The practice of employing foreign founders was also well established among
the Ottomans. Prior to the Fall of Constantinople Mehmed had obtained the
services of Master Urban, who was probably from the historic region of
Moldavia, by offering him higher pay than the Byzantine emperor.69 Urban
had built a giant gun for Mehmed, which had to be dragged by sixty oxen to
Constantinople according to the contemporary Greek chronicler Doukas.70
Once Mehmed assumed control of the Genoese colony of Pera in 1453, he not
only took over the cannon foundry itself but also its craftsmen and developed
it into his own cannon foundry or Tophane.71 In the 1450s many of the sultan’s
cannon founders were Germans or Transylvanians.72 The German cannon
founder Jörg of Nuremberg claimed to have been captured in Bosnia in 1460
and taken into Mehmed’s service where he remained for twenty years.73
The composition of bronze used in Ottoman cannon and the technology
used in their casting was very similar to that of contemporary Europe.74 Such
correspondences are no coincidence and reinforce the importance of the
movement of experts in the dissemination of technical knowledge. The
so-called Dardanelles Gun of 1464 (Fig. 6) cast in two parts demonstrates
proficiency in the screw-pipe technology of contemporary Europe.75 Since the
art of casting rested on experience transmitted from caster to caster the sending
of an individual could be of great significance.76 Even a short period of time
could be a sufficient amount of contact as demonstrated by the Lord of Faenza’s

68
ASV, Senato Terra, reg. 5 (1462–1467), fols. 47r and 59r; M. E. Mallett and J. R. Hale, The Military
Organisation of a Renaissance State: Venice c.1400 to 1617 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), 82–3.
69
Doukas, Decline and Fall of Byzantium to the Ottoman Turks: An Annotated Translation of ‘Historia Turco-
Byzantina’, trans. Harry J. Magoulias (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1975), 200. For discussion of
Urban’s much-debated origins, see Neslihan Asutay-Effenberger, ‘Mehmets Kanonenmeister Urban und sein
Riesengeschütz vor der Landmauer von Konstantinopel (1453)’, in Neslihan Asutay-Effenberger and Ulrich
Rehm, Sultan Mehmet II. Eroberer Konstantinopels – Patron der Künste (Köln: Böhlau, 2009), 211–25 (at 211) and
Gábor Ágoston, ‘Ottoman Artillery and European Military Technology in the Fifteenth and Seventeenth
Centuries’, Acta Orientalia Academiae Scientarum Hungaricae, 47/1–2 (1994), 15–48 (at 27–8n).
70
Doukas, Decline and Fall of Byzantium, 207.
71
Colin Heywood, Writing Ottoman History: Documents and Interpretations (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002), Chapter
15 (the volume does not have continuous pagination), 15.
72
Babinger, Mehmed the Conqueror, 138–9.
73
A. Vasiliev, ‘Jörg of Nuremberg: A Writer Contemporary with the Fall of Constantinople’, Byzantion, 10
(1935), 205–9.
74
Ágoston, Guns for the Sultan, 61 and 186.
75
On screw-pipe cannon, see Michael Rogers, ‘Mehmet II. und die Naturwissenschaften’, in
Asutay-Effenberger and Ulrich Rehm, Sultan Mehmet II. Eroberer Konstantinopels – Patron der Künste, 89n.
76
Ágoston, Guns for the Sultan, 43 and 46; see also Pamela H. Smith, The Body of the Artisan: Art and Experience
in the Scientific Revolution (Chicago; London: University of Chicago Press, 2004) on the importance of knowledge
obtained through observation and experience.
 Bellini, bronze and bombards: Sultan Mehmed II 763

Fig. 6 Great bombard, known as the Dardanelles Gun,1464, bronze, length 518.2cm, Leeds, Royal Armouries
(© Royal Armouries)

request to the Duke of Ferrara for the loan of the founder Alberghetto
Alberghetti for eight days, long enough to show Alberghetti his artillery.77
If we consider the circumstances of 1479 and 1480 from the Ottoman point
of view, there is further reason to believe that the requests for bronze founders
may have been motivated by military concerns. It has been noted that the
periods in which Mehmed engaged in cultural projects coincide with the
times when he was resting from campaigns, but it was also during these
periods of apparent rest that he was planning new campaigns. Dei’s chronicle
recorded that in March 1480 the Ottoman envoy had informed Lorenzo de’
Medici of a large-scale military operation (‘grande apparechio’) in prepara-
tion, which most probably referred to the forthcoming campaign against
Rhodes which began in late May 1480.78 Tursun Bey’s contemporary history of
Mehmed claims that he was planning operations against the Mamluks.79 In the
spring of 1480, around the time when Mehmed made his requests to Venice
and Florence, Mehmed sent his cannon founder Jörg of Nuremberg to Alex-
andria on a reconnaissance mission.80 A campaign against southern Italy was
also planned, which was carried out in August 1480 when Otranto was taken
by the Ottomans.
Cannon had achieved many of Mehmed’s greatest victories and during the
recent war against the Ottomans the Venetians had heavily re-fortified the
areas under their control. Around the time of Mehmed’s second request for
77
A. Angelucci, Documenti inediti per la storia delle armi da fuoco italiane, in 2 vols. (Torino: G. Cassone, 1869),
Vol. 1, part 1, 277–9: ‘se degne concederme Albergheto per octo zorni, tanto che io facia vedere queste mie
artigliarie.’
78
Dei, La Cronica, 176.
79
Tursun Beg, The History of Mehmed the Conqueror, trans. Halil Inalcık and Rhoads Murphey (Minneapolis:
Bibliotheca Islamica, 1978), 64.
80
Vasiliev, ‘Jörg of Nuremberg’, 205–9.
764 Antonia Gatward Cevizli
a bronze founder the Venetians were concerned for Friuli; a document dated
17 March 1480 talks of supporting the region with men, provisions and
ammunitions.81 Their anxiety was not unfounded; in August 1480 a large body
of Ottomans were ready to cross the border into Friuli.82 Under such circum-
stances, Venice was unlikely to furnish the Ottomans with bronze founders
who could be of assistance in building technology that could be used against
them. Furthermore, Venice was preoccupied with preparing her own army
and river fleet during a period of uneasy tension that would lead to the War
of Ferrara.
The export of weapons and strategic war materials to the ‘infidel’ was
prohibited by the Pope but the sending of technicians – as opposed to mat-
erials – seems to have been something of a grey area. Venice’s refusal to send
additional bronze founders to Mehmed could be explained by scruples.
However, it seems more likely that the Senate refused the request as it was not
in their interests. Trade in merces prohibitae had continued regardless of the
ban.83 The Venetian Senate had readily sent weapons and technicians to
another ‘infidel’ ruler some years earlier in 1472. During the Ottoman–
Venetian war, an envoy from the Ak Koyunlu Turkmen ruler Uzun Hasan
travelled to Venice to ask for artillery to use against their common enemy,
the Ottomans. Fifty-two bombards, over a thousand smaller guns, gunpowder
and other equipment along with 200 men were sent to Uzun Hasan since it
was in the Republic’s interests for this technology to be directed towards the
Ottomans.84
Mehmed’s requests for bronze founders did not detail the work that they
would be set on their arrival. It has been assumed that their services would
have related to the production of portrait medals and other sculptural pro-
jects. However, the casting of portrait medals would not have warranted a
team of founders from Venice and Florence, especially given that the sultan’s
technicians were capable of casting the intricate sculptural relief decoration
seen on cannon made for presentation to Mehmed (Fig. 7). Venice’s refusal
to oblige Mehmed’s second request indicates that they believed that more was
at stake.
The greater number of requests for bronze founders indicates that they
were of more importance to Mehmed than painters. Portrait medals were an
effective medium for Mehmed in terms of communicating to a Western
audience an image of himself both as a new Alexander and as an emperor.
However, an eagerness to obtain portrait medals does not fully explain the
81
ASV, Senato Terra, reg. 8, fol. 89r.
82
Babinger, Mehmed the Conqueror, 400. For further discussion of Ottoman raids in Friuli, see
Maria Pia Pedani, ‘Turkish Raids in Friuli at the End of the Fifteenth Century’, in Markus Köhbach, Gisela
Prochazka-Eisl and Claudia Römer (eds.), Acta Viennensia Ottomanica (Wien: Selbstverlag des Instituts für
Orientalistik, 1999), 287–91 (at 288).
83
Ágoston, ‘Ottoman Artillery and European Military Technology’, 46.
84
For Venetian assistance to Uzun Hasan, see Babinger, Mehmed the Conqueror, 307 and Maria Pia Pedani,
Venezia porta d’Oriente (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2010), 114.
 Bellini, bronze and bombards: Sultan Mehmed II 765

Fig. 7 Detail of a cannon from the time of Mehmed the Conqueror, bronze, Askeri Müze, Istanbul, length
346 cm (photo: author, reproduced with permission from the Askeri Müze, Istanbul)

number and range of requests for bronze founders in the years 1479–80. The
timing of the sultan’s requests and the Venetian Republic’s refusal to send
another founder suggests an awareness on both sides of the potential scope of
a bronze founder’s expertise that could extend beyond artistic commissions to
the production of bombards. The romanticization of Bellini’s mission at the
Ottoman court has cast a cultural gloss over a story in which shrewd political
and military priorities also played a considerable role.

Sotheby’s Institute of Art