The sultan’s true face? Gentile Bellini, Mehmet II, and the values of verisimilitude! ’ Elizabeth Rodini ‘Art historians are often concemed with firsts, so it is not surprising that there have been a number of scholarly attempts to identify the frst accurate | representation of a non-Westerer by a European artist. Among the candidates for this achievement are works by Pisanello, Ambrogio Lorenzetti, and Benozzo Gozzoli When it comes to representations of the Turks, the honor of primacy generally goes to portraits made by Wester artists working for the Ottoman Sultan Mehmed IL in Istanbul between about 1460 and 1480. ‘The majority of these works are portrait medals, but the most unusual and striking because itis nearly life-sized and painted in colo, is the canvas now in the collection of the National Gallery, London, dated 1480 and attributed to the Venetian painter Gentile Bellini Fig. 2.1? Most scholars have located the portrait of Sultan Mehmed IT within a wider discussion of a general move from fantasy to naturalism in Western representations of the Turks, a move ‘entered in Venice where contact with the Eastern Mediterranean and the lands beyond was particularly intense’ Along with textiles, glass, ceramics, metalwork, and spices, Venetian travelers returned home from the East with the knowledge necessary, as Julian Raby put i, to produce and appreciate lthe “frst factual images of the Muslim world.”> Bellin's portrat is widely considered an important participant in a resulting transition away from stereotype and toward more “authentic” images ofthe (Islamic) other Scholars have also acknowledged the pictorial rhetoric of Bellini's portrait. Massimo Villa notes that, for all its apparent precision (including the sultan’s arched brow and aquiline nose), the painting isa work of courtly flattery? Jing, Meyer zur Capellen links the pairing of portrait likeness and heraldicemblem (the six floating crowns) with the language of the medal, a genre favored by Mehmed? and a number of scholars have examined the intersection of Italian andOttomanportraittraitionsinBelini'scomposition? Butequaly persistentElzabeth Rodini 23. if not more so ae claims tothe picture's truth, particularly those directed Gentle Bellin’s portrait of Sultan Mehmed offers 8 productive place to ‘examine the complicated relationship between truth and painting. particularly with regard to the Wester European imaging ofthe Turk.” One may begin by the portraits very reputation foe verisimilite and truthfulness. For painting Isstrikingly artifical ints construction snd overall "feel" (how, for instance isthe portrait, rom the pont ofits production neta oitsIatr reception in Venice and to its eventual “canonization” among the authentic and reliable images of the Other. The circulation ofthe painting which passed from East o West aso citical because ofthe shifts in interpetationand signfican inaudience. Although scholars are unable to race its itinerary with precision the senerallyacepted accountis that, at some point soon ate its production in 1480 (and the sultan’ death in 148 ‘art, shih places the poral in the possession of Pietro Zeno, di Belin brought the painting back himself—a claim that, though unsubstantiated,Indeed ts posible Ha Metres