CIRCLE OF CRISTOFANO DELL'ALTISSIMO, FLORENCE, ITALY, CIRCA 1600

"If we recall to mind the historical deeds accomplished by the two men, we are certain that more blood was shed in eight years of Selim's reign than in these past thirty years when Süleyman has held sway. He is a worthy holder of the name of Solomon, bringing to mind the wisdom, glory and fame of these unchanging syllables." (Pauli Iovii [Paolo Giovio], Elogia virorum bellica virtute illustrium, Basel, 1575, pp. 372)

On 17 January 1543, with his fleet moored to the docks of Marseille, the Ottoman admiral Hayreddin Barbarossa presented his French counterpart, Virginio Orsini, with a precious casket made of ebony and ivory, cementing the Franco-Turkish alliance through this luxurious gift. Contained within the casket were eleven paintings of Ottoman sultans that would define how Europe saw the Turkish rulers (Charles de la Roncière, Histoire de la marine française III: Les Guerres d’Italie, Paris, 1906, p.387).

Almost immediately, the portraits, probably painted on paper by the naval captain and painter Haydar Reis (1492-1572), known as Nigari (“the Portraitist”), found their way into the collection of Paolo Giovio (1483-1552). Giovio was an Italian prelate and close confidant of the Medici pope Clement VII who spent much of his career fruitlessly attempting to unite Christian rulers against what he perceived to be "the Turkish threat". He was nevertheless filled with admiration for the young Süleyman. In a series of dialogues composed during his self-imposed exile on the island of Ischia in 1527, he contrasts the respect the Ottoman ruler showed to churches with the brutality inflicted by the troops of Charles V and his general Charles of Bourbon during the Sack of Rome earlier that year.

From 1538 to 1543, Giovio built on the banks of Lake Como a "Musaeum", containing within it a unique collection of 484 portraits of the great figures of history, selected for their verisimilitude. Tirelessly assembled over several decades, the collection contained kings, popes, artists, and men of letters, and included an important group of portraits of the Ottoman sultans based on the paintings presented by Barbarossa. Although the Giovio series does not survive today, the portrait gallery assembled attracted such attention that its contents were copied on multiple occasions.

Perhaps most important among these, Cosimo I de' Medici commissioned the Florentine artist Cristofano dell'Altissimo to copy at least 280 portraits, including that of Süleyman, for the Uffizi, where they have been on display since 1587. Dell'Altissimo refines the Giovio series portrait with the omission of the top of Süleyman's turban and the arrow which he holds in his hand, showing a more intimate image of the sultan through the emphasis on the stern but thoughtful visage of Süleyman.

It is through dell'Altissimo's version of the portrait that the present image of Süleyman became widely distributed across Europe and informed the European image of the magnificent Ottoman sultan. Indeed, dell'Altissimo himself repurposed parts of the Giovio series for various other Medici properties, assisted by a number of Florentine artists. The present portrait shows an intimate familiarity with the Uffizi portrait lacking from other known copies, which suggests that it was painted by a painter of dell'Altissimo's circle.

A curious variation between the present portrait of Süleyman and the Uffizi portrait are the light hairs introduced to the eyebrows and moustache, and the heavier, more defined lines around the eyes, suggesting the painter subtly aged the subject of the portrait. By 1600, the youthful Süleyman of Giovio's time was a distant memory and the Ottoman sultan had acquired the serene gravitas of 'the Lawgiver', which the painter expertly captured in the present portrait.

A portrait of Süleyman copied directly from the Giovio series is in Schloss Ambras, Innsbruck (inv. no. Gemäldegalerie, 2429). A 1575 publication of the Giovio series contains a woodcut illustration of Süleyman's portrait by Tobias Stimmer (1539-84; Iovii, op. cit.). A portrait of Süleyman after Cristofano dell'Altissimo, copied for William Kerr, 3rd Earl of Lothian (1605-75), was sold at Sotheby's London, 20 January 2022, lot 74. Another portrait of Süleyman after Cristofano dell'Altissimo was sold at Sotheby's London, 31 March 2021, lot 58.