Sultan Mehmet III (1566-1603)
after Cristofano dell'Altissimo (c.1525 - Florence 1605)
Category
Art / Oil paintings
Date
1600 - 1699
Materials
Oil on panel
Measurements
440 x 364 mm
Order this imageCollection
Anglesey Abbey, Cambridgeshire
NT 515689
Summary
Oil painting on panel, Sultan Mehmet III (1566 - 1603), after Cristofano dell'Altissimo (c.1525 - Florence 1605). Inscribed Mahomed III imp. A head-and-shoulders of bearded man in a turban. Sultan Mehmet III (1566 - 1603) was the sultan of Turkey from 1595; Ottoman emperor and son of Murad III (1575 - 1595). On his succession he invoked the law of fratricide by which the sultan could have his brothers put to death. This had also been invoked by his father. All 19 of his half-brothers of whom the eldest was only 11, were executed by strangulation, he also had six pregnant slaves in the harem killed just in case, the women in the harem were all bundled off to the Old Seraglio, where they lived the remainder of their lives in monastic seclusion. Within a few months Mehmet III had built up his own harem, starting with fifty and soon rising to five hundred virgins. The power behind the throne was Mehmet’s mother the Sultana Baffo, a Venetian from a noble family. Elizabeth I sent gifts to the Sultana which included a ‘jewel of her Majesties picture set with rubies and diamonds’. She also corresponded with Catherine de Medici. In 1593 the Emperor Maximilian marched on the Ottoman Empire crossed the Danube and routed the Turks from many of their strongholds. Mehmet left for the battlefield and watch the ensuing battle from the edge. On the third day of the battle, the Austrians and Hungarians were routed and thirty thousand of their number perished. Mehmet returned to Constantinople to a hero’s welcome. Meanwhile Baffo had infected the whole government system with bribery and corruption. Every office was a sale and the country slowly slid into administrative chaos. Mehmet died aged fifty-two ‘wholly given to a sensual and voluptuous life, the marks whereof he continually carried about him, with a foul, swollen, unwieldy and overgrown body’. Shortly after Baffo was strangled in her bed. Mehmet was succeeded by his son Ahmed I (1590 - 1617).
Provenance
Bequeathed to the National Trust by Huttleston Rogers Broughton, 1st Lord Fairhaven (1896-1966) with the house and the rest of the contents.
Credit line
Anglesey Abbey, The Fairhaven Collection (National Trust)
Marks and inscriptions
Mehemet III imp
Makers and roles
after Cristofano dell'Altissimo (c.1525 - Florence 1605) , artist