Lead up to the
Venetian Embassy of 1479
From The Cambridge Modern History:
In 1477 the Turks renewed their designs in this
quarter by besieging Kroja, and at the same time
their light cavalry (akindje) harassed Venice in the
north by overrunning Friuli. The garrison of Kroja,
reduced to eating their dogs, and receiving no aid
from Venice, submitted in the ensuing year, and
Mohammad advanced to the second siege of Scodra. The
Venetian republic was hard pressed. In these days its
yearly revenue did not touch 100,000 ducats; nor
could the Venetians at this moment expect aid from
other powers; Ferdinand of Naples was actually
intriguing with the Turk, and Friuli was exposed to
the inroads of the infidels from Bosnia; the plague
was raging in the lagoons. Unable to relieve Scodra,
Venice resolved to make peace and consented to hard
conditions, resigning Scodra and Kroja, Negroponte,
Lemnos and the Mainote district in Laconia. She
agreed to pay a yearly sum of 10,000 ducats for free
commerce in the Ottoman dominions, and recovered the
right of keeping as before a Bailo (consul) at
Constantinople (January, 1479).
The Cambridge modern history, Volume 1
, Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton Acton,
Ernest Alfred Benians Editors; Sir Adolphus William
Ward, Sir George Walter Prothero, Stanley Mordaunt
Leathes, The University press, 1912
From George Castroiti Scanderbeg
(1405-1468)
Venice was worn out with her prolonged and
exhausting efforts, and in 1479 the peace of
Constantinople brought the war to a close. Venice
gave up Scutari, Kroja, Negropont, Lemnos, and her
possessions in the Morea, but was allowed to retain
her Levant trade and her quarter in Constantinople on
payment of 15o,000 ducats down and a yearly tribute
of 1o,000 ducats. Two years later, the death of
Mohammed n. and the accession of a feebler sultan,
freed the republic from immediate danger in the east.
The close of the Middle Ages, 1272-1494, Periods of
European history. Period 3 3rd Edition Sir Richard
Lodge, Rivingtons, 1906 The news of Scanderbeg's
death reached Venice on February 12, 1468.69
Immediately the Senate dispatched the Archbishop of
Durazzo and the provisor Francesco Capello to obtain
from Scanderbeg's widow and son the right to defend
Croya and the other fortresses with Venetian
garrisons.70 The right was granted and the city
continued to hold out against the Turks until 1477.
"Choirs of Albanian maidens", Sabellicus
informs us, "though surrounded with the din of
battle and the clang of barbarian arms, assembled
regularly every eighth day in the public squares of
the cities of the principality to sing hymns for
their departed hero. The spirit of Scanderbeg still
survived among his people although he himself had
passed away. The city was starved into surrender on
June 16, 1478. In spite of the solemn pledge to spare
the lives of the brave defenders, Mehmed II ordered
them to be massacred in cold blood while their women
and children were dragged away into slavery. A year
later, Scutari fell after a protracted siege by
Mehmed II in person. The story of the heroic defense
is told by Barletius, who witnessed it and counted
the huge stone shells crashing into the city every
day in ever increasing numbers and size. After the
peace of 1479 Venice lost all her Albanian
possessions with the exception of Durazzo, Dulcigno
and Antivari. The Albanians themselves helped them
out. As a class of free peasants, they hated equally
feudalism under the Turkish Sultan and capitalism
under the Venetian merchant princes. Under the treaty
of 1479 between Venice and Turkey, Albania was ceded
to Turkey. As Fallmerayer remarks, it was a cession
on paper.78 The Turks took possession only of a few
fortresses ' but the countryside defied their rule
down to the Balkan Wars of 1912-1913, when Turkey
lost almost all her European provinces. Scanderbeg
died but the Albanian free Peasants remained.
George Castroiti Scanderbeg
(1405-1468), Fan Stylian Noli International
Universities Press, 1947
The Venetian
'embassy' to Istanbul in 1479
The Venetian 'embassy' to Istanbul in 1479, which
included diplomats as well as painters, resulted in
Bellini's celebrated portrait of Mehmed Fatih, dated
25 November 1480, now in the National Gallery,
London, as well as a medal, several drawings and
studies of figural subjects (and their ravishing
costume) observed during the artist's two-year
sojourn in the Ottoman capital.
Bellini's "journey to the east", and his
measured and sensitive reponse to an unfamiliar
'oriental' culture, finds a counterpart in Mehmed's
own fascination with the 'occidental' tradition of
figural representation and his concern to express his
own place within that tradition as a conqueror, and
now ruler, of an empire that spanned both east and
west. These preoccupations are evident in Bellini's
portrait where imperial symbolism and allegory are
manifest: the bust-length pose and triumphal arch
harking back to imperial Roman models; the three
crowns referencing the three domains of Greece,
Trebizond and Asia; and the proud profile alluding to
a lineage of great conquerors going back to Iskandar
(Alexander). In appropriating the ancient realm of
Byzantium, Mehmed consciously viewed himself as the
new 'King of Rum [Rome]', heir to Alexander the Great
and the Caesars.
A year after Bellini's portrait was painted Mehmed
Fatih was dead. His
successor, Bayezid II (1481-1512), "was as
averse to figural painting as his father was
fond" (Venice and the Islamic World, 2007,
p.107) and, according to Giovanni Angiolello, the
historian, all of Mehmed's paintings including the
Bellini portrait were disposed of in the bazaar where
they were acquired by Venetian merchants and brought
back to Venice (Bellini and the East, 2005, p.95).
The present portrait must have been painted soon
after as the pose has been updated with a fashionable
cross-shoulder glance in the manner of Giorgione and
Titian.
Bellini's iconic image, which encapsulates the
imperial ambitions of 'The Conqueror', became quite
literally an icon, when in 2003 Turks of all ages
queued in their tens of thousands to catch a glimpse
of the painting when it returned briefly to the
Turkish capital. The appearance on the market of this
lesser-known but hugely important second painting
provides an exceptional opportunity for a major
institution or private buyer to acquire a work of
outstanding public interest and historical
importance.
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