Representing the Ottomans and Their World in 1490s Mantua: The Lost “Ottoman Mode” in Mantuan Painting in Comparative Perspective

Abstract

IN MANTUA DURING THE 1490S , the friendship between Francesco II Gonzaga, Marquis of Mantua (r. 1484–1519), and the Ottoman sultan Bayezid II (r. 1481– 1512) was celebrated both directly and indirectly on the walls of the Gonzaga palaces. Rather unexpectedly for a small landlocked city-state, paintings with Ottoman subject matter—including views of Ottoman territories, a scene of a Turkish banquet, and a portrait of the Ottoman ambassador—were executed both in Mantua itself and in Francesco’s rural palaces following the Ottoman ambassador’s visit. They are now only known to us through documents, since the rural palaces were destroyed in the eighteenth century after having fallen into disrepair. This has resulted in a gap in the corpus of Italian representations of their Eastern neighbors. It is significant that the Mantuan Ottoman-themed paintings occur at the very moment when the Mamluks, whose rule extended across Egypt, the Levant, and the Hejaz, were becoming a more prominent interest in Venice and Florence, and at a time when the Ottomans were being depicted as persecutors of Christians in paintings in the papal apartments. This study seeks to integrate Mantua’s lost “Ottoman