This thesis proposes an anti-Orientalist reading of the portrait of the Ottoman Sultan Mehmed the Conqueror (r. 1451-1481) by Gentile Bellini. The artist's work is analysed in the context of the Venetian Renaissance and the status of the visual arts in the Ottoman Empire. Mehmed's patronage of Italian artists, who created medallic and pictorial portraits of the sovereign, is considered together with the local translation of conventions enabled by early modern cross-cultural encounters. The Western political and intellectual climate following the conquest of Constantinople by Mehmed in 1453 is examined and, in particular, the secularising crusade literature produced by humanist scholars. Covert efforts to incorporate the Turks within the boundaries of civilised society coexisted with the conventional derogatory anti-Turkish propaganda. Bellini's portrait is seen as an attempt to portray the sultan as a member of the Venetian aristocracy. The historiographical record of modern academic scholarship in the disciplines of history and art history exploring these cross-cultural exchanges is set in a framework that explores the role of Edward Said's Orientalism in light of recent developments.

No description available.

This thesis examines four European portrait prints of Ottoman sultan Mehmed II, dated 1470 to 1493. At the center of this study is a formal and iconographical analysis that indicated all are rooted in traditional artistic conventions of both Western princely portraiture and stereotypical imagery of evil doers. Part of a feverish textual and visual discourse that was the result of great fear for the Ottoman aggression, they all adhere to a conventionalized type for the Eastern despot. The portraits employ to varying degrees a general pictorial language of evil, based on medieval folk imagery, that employed sartorial and physical signifiers used for a wide range of social groups that were not accepted by Christian society. The result is four images that share certain characteristics, most notably an iconic hat, but differ considerably in others to bring across diverging messages about the sultan's ambiguous public identity.