A Sultan of Paradox: Mehmed the Conqueror as a Patron of the Arts Author(s): Julian Raby Source: Oxford Art Journal,

Vol. 5, No. 1, Patronage (1982), pp. 3-8 Published by: Oxford University Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1360098 Accessed: 04/05/2009 11:33
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A Sultan of Paradox: Mehmed the Conqueror as a patron of the arts

JULIAN RABY

first state, signed, undated,diam. 12.3 cm. National GalleryofArt, Fig. 1. Costanzada Ferrara:Bronzemedalof Mehmedthe Conqueror, (right). Washington,SamuelH. Kress Collection.Obverse (left) and reverse

The aquiline, beturbaned features that glare out from this Quattrocento bronze medallion (Fig. 1) are not a romantic artist's fanciful image of 'The Oriental Potentate', but an ad vivum likeness of Mehmed II, the Ottoman Sultan whose conquest of Constantinople in 1453 and destruction of the millenium-old Byzantine Empire, earned him at the age of 21 the awesome sobriquet of Fatih, the Conqueror. Yet what prompted a Muslim potentate to invite an Italian medallist to his court in the renascent city of Constantinople, the city that became known as Istanbul, or as Mehmed himself punned "Islambul", "Full of Islam"? Was there not a paradox in a Muslim prince patronising an Italian medallist? If there was, this was not the only paradox surrounding Mehmed the Conqueror. Mehmed was heir to an empire that was far from the homogeneous orthodox Sunni state that his sixteenth-century successors, in their clash with the heterodox Shiite Safavids, wished to promote. In the fifteenth century there were various attempts, most notably Shaykh Badreddin Simavna's popular movement, to minimise the differences between Islam and Christianity. In this period of transition we find members of the Palaeologan house serving as commanders of the Sultan; and Mehmed's long-standing Grand
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Vizier, Mahmud Pasha, had a brother who was his opposite number - Grand Voivode - in Serbia, while their mother was granted a monastery in Istanbul. Acculturation could not keep pace with the rapid march of Ottoman arms, and the conquest of Constantinople, in particular, extended the Ottomans' cultural horizons, bringing them, on the one hand, face to face with metropolitan Byzantine culture, encouraging them, on the other, to become a naval power with extensive maritime contacts. As an adolescent Mehmed's behaviour had caused his elders considerable concern; he was slow - and had to be beaten - to memorise the Koran, and even when he assumed the reins of power on his father's first, and premature, retirement from the throne, he consorted with Hurufi dervish missionaries from Iran, who were spreading heterodox ideas about the divine Logos and the divinity of man. Despite, or perhaps because of, the young Sultan's interest, these missionaries were bloodily suppressed; this is not the Ottoman only instance in the fifteenth-century heterodox clashed. and when orthodox Empire Mehmed earned a reputation as a somewhat wayward child, but two aspects of his education are significant for us. First, he has left a scrap-book of pen and ink drawings which include, apart from his 3

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Fig. 2. A page from Mehmed's "school book", 28.5 21.5 cm. TopkapiSarayMuseum, Istanbul(H. 2324).

imperial cypher and studies of animals and arabesques, profile and three-quarter face portrait busts. Portraiture was not entirely unknown in the Islamic world, but it was uncommon and tended to be stereotypic and symbolic. These boyhood drawings are proof of an observant eye and a certain taste for caricature. In spirit they evince a European influence which is also evident in the use of cross-hatching and in their format, approaches to drawing and form which were unknown in the Islamic world (Fig. 2). Secondly, this interest in European pictorial methods was matched by an interest in European history and historiography. Aside from Muslim teachers, Mehmed had two tutors, one schooled in Latin, the other in Greek, who just prior to the fall of Byzantium read to him daily from "Laertius, Herodotus, Livy, Quintus Curtius, Chronicles of the Popes, Emperors, the Kings of France and the Lombards...." It has long been maintained that the Latin tutor was that ardent and influential Hellenophile, Cyriacus of Ancona, but the claim was based on a manuscript misreading, for the lector was not Cyriacus but one of his companions, at present, unidentified. The change of players may rob the scene of some of its glamour, but it cannot alter the fact of the ancient history lessons. 4

Interests in portraiture and history were combined in Mehmed's first documented invitation to an Italian artist. As a young man he had twice figured in Renaissance medals, but nothing is known of the artists or the circumstances of their commission. In 1461, however, Mehmed asked Sigismondo Malatesta, Lord of Rimini, for the services of his artistic factotum, Matteo de' Pasti. In his letter of reply, agreeing to Matteo's mission, Sigismondo refers to Mehmed's interest in historical portrait sculptures and to his request that Matteo be sent to "paint and sculpt him". The mission was aborted when Matteo was arrested as a spy by the Venetian authorities in Crete. Nevertheless, the correspondence confirms Mehmed's historical bias and the intimate connection, for the Sultan, between sculpted and graphic portraiture. The importance of this connection to Mehmed is borne out by the fact that he demanded, in addition to painted portraits, a bronze portrait medallion from Gentile Bellini even though he was a tyro at the craft and produced a feeble image. The image served, however, as the model for Bertoldo's medal, commissioned, it would seem, by Lorenzo de' Medici following Mehmed's seizure of the Pazzi conspirator and assassin of Giuliano de' Medici, Bernardo Bandini. In fact, no other Renaissance prince, whether in Italy or Germany, had such a number of artists sculpt medallions of him, and Hill's Corpus devotes an appendix to the anonymous medals of the Sultan. The quality of the medals is variable, and regrettably Matteo de' Pasti, Pisanello's most noted pupil, failed to reach Istanbul. The Sultan was more fortunate with another follower of Pisanello, Costanzo da Ferrara. The Pisanello connection is perhaps significant, because it may well have been Pisanello's medal of the Byzantine Emperor John VIII Palaeologus which stimulated Mehmed's medallic passion; that medal, at least, must have been known in the Levant and Costanzo, little known though he is, in turn produced one of the finest portrait medals of the Renaissance (Fig. 1). Costanzo was sent to Istanbul at an unknown date by Ferdinand of Naples. Again, the initiative was Mehmed's, although it is unclear whether he specified Costanzo by name, as he had Matteo. Better documented is the visit of Gentile Bellini in 1479 and 1480, but here again there is no evidence that Mehmed insisted on Gentile. The only official record mentions a request for a "sculptor and bronzefounder" - sculptural interests once again to the fore. The sculptor the Serenissima sent with Bellini was the Paduan Bartolommeo Bellano, whose visit has hitherto been questioned. Departure was in September, but by October Mehmed was asking the Venetians for a master-builder, who in the end was prevented by illness from leaving, and a bronze sculptor "the same or even better than the first". The reference must surely be to Bellano since no other sculptors are known to have been sent at this time. The implied criticism of Bellano took the Serenissima by surprise, and they wrote back with the defensive plea
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that "the first bronze founder we sent there is very famous in these parts of ours for this sort of work". Mehmed seems to have viewed Bellano's talents differently, and his judgement concurs with that of the contemporary critic Gaurico, who condemned Bellano as an "ineptus artifex", or the heirs of Raimondo Solimani who accused Bellano in court of producing a funerary monument for Solimani of shameful quality - "such an inept and deformed work and a tomb with such deformed and utterly vile figures". The Sultan too was no blind advocate of Italian art. Even before Mehmed received a reply from Venice about his second request, he sent an envoy to Florence seeking "maestri di squlture di bronzo" and "maestri d'intaglio e di legname, e di tarsie". There is no record of how many Florentines made the visit, but it is evident that in the last two and a half years of his life the Sultan established a sizeable European atelier in Istanbul. Bellini and Bellano were both accompanied by two assistants, and in January 1480 the Sultan asked the Venetians for the services of a painter by the name of Bernardo. In the same year a painter from Ragusa was also in Istanbul; Ottoman sources credit him with training Sinan Bey in portraiture. By 1480 Sinan was the Sultan's head painter, and according to official Venetian correspondence he and his relatives wielded considerable influence at court. Alongside the numerous foreign invitees, then, was a group of Ottoman artists practising a foreign, Italianising style. Painting and medallic sculpture were not the limits of Mehmed's European horizon. We have seen how he asked the Venetians for a master-builder and the Florentines for intarsia artists and other craftsmen, and it is tempting to see these as complementary invitations for a planned building which would have been both tectonically and decoratively European. More unusual invitations were also extended at this time; from Venice he sought christallini craftsmen and makers of chiming-clocks, from the Venetian colony of Coron a scabbard maker. Several outstanding swords attest to Mehmed's discrimination in this field, but what is intriguing about the Coron invitation is that Mehmed is said to have whiled away his idle hours fashioning archer's thumbrings, beltbuckles - and scabbards. Patronage found its pendant in the Sultan's own handiwork. This burst of patronage in the last years of Mehmed's life was facilitated by the declaration of peace with Venice, which ended a sixteen-year war which had precluded all cultural contact. The Sultan, in worsening health, seized the opportunity to rest from campaigning and to devote himself to cultural pursuits. Previously, during the mid 1460s, he had had to rest due to illness, and on that occasion too he concentrated, as we shall see, on cultural activities. What emerges is his openness to the latest artistic developments; these included Italian engravings, a collection of which, to judge from circumstantial evidence, he formed as gifts from the Florentine merchants of Pera.
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His patronage was not without its limitations, however. Gentile Bellini was commissioned to paint portraits of the Sultan and his favourites, but his activities seem to have been confined behind the high walls of the imperial Saray, to the private realm of the Sultan. Mehmed does not appear, either from documentary evidence or the evidence of Bellini's known works, to have encouraged Gentile to express his vedutistatalents, even though architecturescapes and processions were to become characteristic of Ottoman miniature painting in the sixteenth century. On his return to Italy, therefore, Bellini was able to supply his fellow artists with single studies of oriental figures, but he failed to provide panoramic views of Ottoman architecture or contextual studies of Muslims in a Muslim habitat. This claim may be surprising in view of the frequent claim that Gentile was the father of Venetian orientalism, the source and inspiration, that is, of the oriental mode at the end of the fifteenth century. The claim is misleading, however, because the major expression of Venetian orientalism at this period was not Ottoman in inspiration, but Mamluk, the rival dynasty which reigned in Syria and Egypt. Bellini never visited Egypt or Syria. He was in no position therefore to be the source of Mamluk motifs. Furthermore it is only with the advent of what we might term the Mamluk mode that Venetian orientalism attempts to make the eastern figure an actor rather than a mere onlooker. Bellini's art does not reflect this development until the independent arrival of the Mamluk mode. Bellini's limited contribution to the oriental mode must surely be linked to the restricted character of Mehmed's patronage. Two documented commissions reflect the very private character of this patronage - one was for erotica, the other for a painting of the Madonna and Child. Two independent Italian sources claim that Mehmed commissioned Gentile to paint a Virgin and Child to accompany his collection of Christian relics. Both claim Gentile as their authority, and the artist was in a good position to know what commissions he had received. The existence of the relic collection is proven beyond all question of doubt by a list drawn up in Italian on the orders of Mehmed's son and successor, Bayezid II, offering the relics - "in the palace of the Grand Signor in which the Grand Turk, the late father of the [sultan] placed them when he took Constantinople" - for sale to the King of France. The purpose of the collection is less certain, though, and a contemporary, Sagundino, records two conflicting opinions that were current; one was that it was a pragmatic collection, destined for barter or sale to a European power, the other that it expressed Mehmed's "sincera divotione". The importance of the Madonna commission is that it confirms the personal relevance of the collection to Mehmed. How many of his subjects knew of the collection or understood its significance for the Sultan is doubtful; even his librarian, Molla Lutfi, in whose charge some of the relics were kept, and who, incidentally, was exe5

cuted as a heretic after Mehmed's death, angered the Sultan when, in order to fetch down a book, he stood on the 'Stone of the Nativity'! These Christian relics were salvaged during the sack of Constantinople, and they raise the question of Mehmed's response to Byzantium. Other items such as the imperial regalia were rescued on the Sultan's orders, and he gathered a large collection of Byzantine marble statuary, including almost all the porphyry sarcophagi from the imperial necropolis at the Church of the Holy Apostles, and the "miraculous" marble toad of Leo the Wise which was in the habit of waking up at night and scouring the streets of the city for garbage. Mehmed's collections of sacred relics and secular marbles reflected Byzantium in its twin guise as the New Jerusalem and the New Rome, and both Greeks and Italians at his court flattered him with the title of Roman Emperor. It is true that he had the great bronze equestrian statue of the Augustaeon pulled down from its hundred-foot-high column outside Hagia Sophia, but this was on the advice of his astrologers who warned him the rider was a talisman of the city. For the Turks it was a maleficent object, and its demolition is no proof of a general iconoclastic campaign. Viceversa,a beneficent talisman, the snakepreventing Serpent Column in the Hippodrome, was preserved by Mehmed; legend claims that he broke one of the serpent's jaws with his mace, but this is unfounded, whereas there is good evidence that he had a mulberry tree, which was growing dangerously close to the column, cauterised to its roots. A collection of Greek manuscripts still in the Topkapi Saray is believed also to have been rescued from the sack. However, seventeen manuscripts have now been identified which represent the library not of the last Byzantine Emperor of Constantinople, but the first Ottoman Sultan of Istanbul. Some were probably intended for the training of Mehmed's Greek chancellery staff, for Greek continued as a language of diplomatic exchange into the first decades of the sixteenth century. Others, on the other hand, bear directly on the Sultan's interests. One is a copy of Arrian's Anabasis, the standard classical source on the life of Alexander the Great; it is a companion volume to a history of Mehmed the Conqueror written by a Greek courtier, Kritobulos, the leitmotiv of whose work was Mehmed's image as the neo-Alexander. There is a copy of the Iliad produced, it appears, shortly after Mehmed's visit to Troy in 1462 when, according to Kritobulos, he stood in the plain of Ilium "shaking his head a little" and asking to see the tombs of Ajax and Achilles, heroes fortunate, he said, to have had Homer as their eulogist. He even referred to himself as a Trojan come to avenge the East for all the injustice they had received from the West; the reference echoes a wellknown conceit, which Pope Pius II made efforts to refute, that the Turks, the Turci, were descendants of the Trojans, the Teucri. Other manuscripts catered to his interest in geography, but the most telling expression of this interest 6

came during the mid-1460s when he had the leading expert on Ptolemy, George Amirutzes, prepare a wall-map of the world from the discrete maps in Amirutzes and one of his sons Ptolemy's Geography; were commissioned to translate the work into Arabic. During his enforced rest in 1465 Mehmed studied peripatetic philosophy with Amirutzes. Mehmed conversed about Christianity with the monk Gennadios whom he had instated as the first patriarch of Istanbul, and following an imperial request Gennadios wrote a tract on the Christian faith, which was duly translated. And it must have been from Gennadios that Mehmed or one of his circle acquired the fragments of the Laws by the fifteenth-century neoPlatonist, Georgios Gemistos Plethon, for these fragments, which include a hymn to Zeus, survive in Arabic translation in an imperial manuscript attributable to his reign. Another of the Greek manuscripts in the Saray is a copy, dated 1474, of the Antiquities of Constantinople, which includes an account of Santa Sophia. Mehmed is known to have collected oral and written records of the building's history, questioning Greek priests and ordering translations of Greek works on its construction and the founding of Constantinople. Several Turkish and Persian versions are recorded from the late 1470s, some commissioned and/or dedicated to the Sultan. Mehmed's response to Constantinople and its culture went far beyond physical salvage. Nevertheless, there is little evidence that he patronised Greek artists, although this may reflect more on the sources, or the parlous state of late Byzantine crafts, than on Mehmed himself. On one occasion, however, he organised a competition between two Greeks and a Persian musician, aimed at testing the Byzantine system of musical notation. The episode is cited in sixteenth-century Patriarchal sources as evidence of Mehmed's open-mindedness to Greeks as well as Turks, and his image in the Patriarchal contrasts with his chronicles as an enlightened tyrannos where he is aulic histories in the Byzantine image For the aulic monster. an as apocalyptic depicted historians the conquest had meant the end if not of the world, at least of their world, whereas the patriarchate found new, and unexpected, life with Mehmed's decision to reconstitute it with spiritual and temporal leadership over the Greek community.
* * *

This breathless retailing of facts should have served to demonstrate Mehmed's voracious and eclectic mentality, as well as the personal character of much of his patronage. Thus far we have almost entirely avoided the topic of architecture; yet aspects of Mehmed's architectural patronage are revealing. In the first place they confirm his contacts with Italy and his taste for innovation; secondly, they illustrate the rewards and penalties he meted out to his artists and testify, thirdly, to the diversity of Mehmed's cultural borrowings. Finally, and most importantly, they reveal the divide between his public and his private patronage.
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His interest in Italian architectural innovations is borne out by his invitation to the Bolognese architect and engineer, Aristotile Fieravante, while Fieravante's associate Filarete certainly planned a visit in 1465 to Istanbul, where his contact was the influential Amirutzes. At the time Mehmed was building his most important religious structure, the huge Fatih mosque complex in Istanbul, and it is perhaps no coincidence that its symmetrical layout was a departure in Ottoman architecture and bore a similarity to Filarete's Ospedale Maggiore in Milan, or more exactly to the idealised plan in his architectural treatise. Mehmed also converted Filarete's theoretical musings about star-shaped fortresses into reality, anticipating the rest of the world by decades. In fact, within little more than twelve years he built four major fortresses in or around Istanbul. The first was entirely mediaeval in its empirical plan and emphasis on vertical defence, but its scale alone was remarkable. Built in less than five months, it had three great towers, one of which was larger than any in Europe except for the now obliterated Donjon of Coucy. One of the later castles, by contrast, prefaced the development of sixteenth-century fortification; it was a low enceinte in which the role of artillery was fully integrated. (Artillery was another of Mehmed's interests, as his siege guns at Constantinople conclusively proved). In the building of the later castles he sought the advice of the leaders of the Florentine community in Pera. Given this rapid sequence of construction, the growing conceptual character of the architecture, and the involvement of Europeans, it comes as no surprise that Mehmed's military buildings had little influence on the long-term evolution of Ottoman fortification. A dark side of Mehmed's patronage emerges from his treatment of the architect of the Fatih mosque. Christian sources identify him as Christodoulos, Ottoman sources as Sinan-i Atik; they may refer to one and the same person, not least because both claim that the architect was executed on the Sultan's orders. In better days Sinan had been generously rewarded with property, and his death was seen in popular circles as a shameful incident that blackened the reputation of a Sultan already resented for financing his grandiose schemes by harsh exactions on the provinces. Sinan died "after repeated beatings"; "I wonder", writes the author of the AnonymousChronicles, "was his sin so great that he deserved to die in this way?" One wonders too. Sinan's fate contrasts with Bellini's rewards. Gentile and Costanzo, as well as the Venetian envoy who negotiated the peace of 1479, were all "knighted" by the Sultan, Bellini receiving a gold medal and chain which must have been meant to correspond to the collana of the European equestrian orders. And Bellini, who left the Sultan one of his father Jacopo's treasured sketchbooks, now in the Louvre but still in the Saray in the seventeenth century, was rewarded with, among other things, the golden armour of Doge Dandolo. Whatever the racial origins of the architect of MehTHE OXFORD ARTJOURNAL 5:1 1982

med's Fatih mosque, and whatever the displeasure of the Sultan, the result was a monumental testament to Islam. By its position and size alone it invited comparison with Santa Sophia, the newly converted mosque of Ayasofya. A courtier of Mehmed's described the Fatih mosque as fashioned on the design of Ayasofya but in a new and modern style. This bears out the success of the mosque in integrating the influence of the Justinianic church - in scale and the use of the semi-dome - into a by now well-established Ottoman architectural tradition. This integration enabled the mosque and its dependencies to play an important role in the development of Ottoman architecture. The same cannot be said, however, of all Mehmed's palace architecture. Mehmed was responsible, on the one hand, for much of the palace known today as the Topkapi Saray. It was a legacy that served the Ottoman court for some 400 years. On the other hand, he indulged in eclectic fantasy, building three pavilions a stone's throw one from another, one in the Persian-Karaman, another in the Greek, the third in the Turkish style. The first, the Qinili K6sk, survives, and, splendid though it is, it is an anomaly in Ottoman architecture; the other two have disappeared without trace. These pavilions seem to be the material expression of Mehmed's intellectual eclecticism. But the lack of coherence attendant on eclecticism made his example difficult to follow.

The contrast between Mehmed's religious architecture and his pleasure pavilions illustrates the dichotomy between what we may broadly call his "public" and "private" patronage. We have concentrated here on the private sphere, because that is where his contacts with Europe and Byzantium were centred. The result, however, is misleading. First, he was a generous patron of Muslim intellectuals, poets, musicians and craftsmen. Second, his lasting contribution to the Ottoman heritage was in the public rather than private realm. Mehmed's private patronage was, as we have seen, eclectic with a strong interest in both historical and contemporary Western culture, if by the West we include Byzantium. In the visual arts his love of painted and medallic portraiture was modish, and in a Muslim context innovatory; in architecture he could be innovatory not only in an Ottoman but in a European context also. As a patron, however, he was active in so many different spheres and directions that it seems he failed to develop - if indeed he wanted to - a coherent intellectual or aesthetic programme. Certainly, his private patronage remained just that overdependent on his own person. He failed to create, by involvement or delegation, a sufficiently broad base of interest at court, so that on his death the initiative passed, and those who disapproved could eradicate different facets of patronage as they 7

pleased. And there were the disapproving, for Mehmed's patronage had religious and political implications. Like some of Alexander the Great's Macedonian followers, many resented Mehmed's advancement of foreign talent, voicing the complaint: If you wish to stand in high honour on the Sultan's threshold, You must be a Jew, or a Persian, or a Frank; You must choose the name Habil, Kabil, Hamidid, And behave like Zorzi: show no knowledge. Others must have found the European figural influence objectionable; even if figural painting was an established feature of many Muslim courts, it was anathema in religious circles and there were those who looked for an absolute interdiction. Among the disapproving was Mehmed's son Bayezid who was backed by powerful religious and Turkish factions. Bayezid on his accession sold Mehmed's paintings and disposed of his relics. As Tomaso di Tolfo wrote to Michelangelo from Turkey in 1519, Bayezid took "no delight in figures of any sort; indeed he hated them". Mehmed's portrait initiative, suffered a peremptory fate. However, Bayezid did not repudiate Mehmed's public patronage, in the form of his finest achievement - the city of Istanbul. From the ashes of Constantinople, a city depopulated and ruinous even before the Sack, Mehmed had created one of the great capitals of the world. The process cannot be detailed here; all one can do is to emphasise that he laid the foundations for Istanbul's demographic, topographic and architectural future. By his repopulation he

established the multi-racial and multi-sectarian character of the Ottoman city for more than 400 years. And he built its major palace, military and mercantile sites, while with his Fatih mosque he set the pattern for the imperial edifices that grace the city skyline. Admittedly, his demographic decision was controversial, but the rebuilding he achieved with traditional methods: the modules of urban development were characteristic of Islamic cities, the building schemes were characteristically Ottoman. Delegation played a vital role in Mehmed's urban plan, and he was well supported by his courtiers. These public works were, moreover, entirely aniconic; and no attempt was made to foist his private interests on the populace. The influence of Mehmed's private patronage, therefore, was short-lived - little more than thirty years; the repercussions of his public patronage can still be sensed today.
* * *

Like Bahram Gur who had seven pavilions each of a different colour, and each inhabited by a princess of a different realm, Mehmed could move, as the cultural mood took him, between his different pavilions. It is hardly surprising, then, that his image in Europe was ambivalent, just as it was among the Greeks. The facts, let alone the rumours, were difficult for his contemporaries to reconcile. Mehmed was accused by his son Bayezid of "not believing in Muhammad"; others, perhaps nearer the mark, accused him of not believing in any one faith. We might add the rider that he did not believe in any one culture. Is that an accusation too?

BibliographicNote

the The standard biography of Mehmed is F. Babinger, Mehmed and his time, Bollinger series, XCVI, Princeton, N.J., Conqueror 1978, which is an English edition of a work that first came out in 1953. Some of Mehmed's invitations to European artists, in partiBelliniet le Sultan cular Bellini, are detailed in L. Thuasne, Gentile Mohammed II, Paris, 1888, and J. von Karabacek, Abendldndische
Kinstler zu Konstantinopel im XV. und XVI. JahrhundertsVol. I,

Institutes, Vol. 43, 1980, pp. 242-246. burgand Courtauld

Kaiserliche Akademie der Wiss. in Wien.Phil.-hist. Klasse, Denkschriften 62 Band, 1 Abhandlung, Vienna 1918. The most recent study is M. Andaloro, 'Costanzo da Ferrara. Gli anni a Vols. Costantinopoli alla corte di Maometto II', Storiadell'Arte, 38/40, 1980, pp. 185-212. For the medals, G.F. Hill, A corpus of

For aspects of Mehmed's urban policy and architecture, H. Inalcik, 'The policy of Mehmed II towards the Greek population of Istanbul and the Byzantine buildings of the city', Dumbarton OaksPapers,23-24, 1969-70, pp. 229-249; M. Restle, 'Bauplanung und Baugesinnung unter Mehmed II Fatih. Filarete in 39, 1981, pp. 361-367. On the Greek Konstantinopel', Pantheon, manuscripts, J. Raby, 'Mehmed the Conqueror's Greek Scriptorium', DumbartonOaksPapers, 37, 1983 (forthcoming).

The question of Bellini's influence on Venetian orientalism is the subject of a monograph due to be published Autumn 1982,
J. Raby, Venice,Direr and the OrientalMode (Hans Huth Memorial

bul, 1961. On the ancient history lessons, J. Raby, 'Cyriacus of Ancona and the Ottoman Sultan Mehmed II', Journalof the War-

Italian medalsof the Renaissancebefore Cellini, 2 vols, London, 1930. For the "schoolbook", S. Unver, Fatihin focukluk defteri. Un cahier d'Enfance du Sultan MehemmedLe Conquerant"Fatih", Istan-

Papers 1). For some of the other topics, including unpublished Venetian documents, I can here only refer the reader to my book,
El Gran Turco:Mehmedthe Conqueror as a Patronof theArts of Christen-

dom, which is scheduled for publication by Alexandria Press in Spring 1984.

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