Portrait of a Man with a Headdress

Author: Klazina Botke

During the late fifteenth century and the beginning of the sixteenth, when interest in Venice in the Islamic world was at its peak, many works of art were produced with Islamic art as the source of inspiration. This emerges from the countless Islamic costumes and buildings depicted in illuminated manuscripts, prints, drawings and sculptures from that era.^[1] This drawing of a man with a curly beard and a small turban is a good example of this interest and was probably made in the Veneto after a portrait of an Ottoman man.^[2] The most famous example of such a portrait is Gentile Bellini’s (c.1430/1434-1507) Portrait of Mehmet II (1480), in which this sultan is portrayed in the same way as the doges at that time.^[3] After his visit to Istanbul, to which he had travelled in 1479 at the invitation of the sultan, Bellini often depicted Islamic figures in his paintings and also passed this practice on to his pupils.^[4] The Arrest of St Mark (1499) by Giovanni Mansueti (c.1465-1527), now in Lichtenstein, is a good example of this.^[5] It is, however, not likely that our drawing was made by Mansueti or even by Bartolommeo Veneto (active c.1502-c.1531), who also studied under Bellini.^[6] The figure is rather flat and displays little plasticity, and it is striking that both eyes are visible while the rest of the face is rendered in profile. Given the quality of the study, it is more probable that the drawing is an anonymous copy of a work from the Veneto.