ABSTRACT
This chapter considers Gentile Bellini’s 1480 portrait of the conqueror of Constantinople Mehmed II and its relationship to Byzantine idioms of power and image making. I argue that the portrait is infused with a type of iconic likeness and that Pisanello’s depiction of the penultimate emperor John VIII Palaiologos served as its prototype establishing a familial relationship between the Byzantine basileus and the Ottoman sultan. I conclude with the observation that by imbuing Mehmed with John VIII’s physical characteristics, Gentile visually incorporated the first Turkish ruler of Constantinople into an uninterrupted line of dynastic succession and transformed him into a proper heir of the older and venerated Byzantine imperial tradition.
