Gentile Bellini’s Textual Strategies in Portraits of Mehmed II

Gentile Bellini’s Textual Strategies in Portraits of Mehmed II Recent scholarship has theorized the place of written text within the development of Renaissance portraiture, revealing instances where inscriptions and other written words assist in bridging the spatial and temporal gap between the image and the viewer, fashioning the identity of the sitter, and shaping the artist’s professional persona and social standing. Following the work of J. Cranston, C. Gilbert, and R. Goffen, this paper will argue that Gentile Bellini already in the 1470s started to use signatures and other stylized inscriptions to immortalize his patrons, and to garner his own fame and recognition. Portraits created during his stay in Constantinople (1479-1480) show Bellini’s strategic use of text within a complex semiotic field. In his virtuoso painted portrait of Mehmed II, Bellini deploys, in concert with iconic signs and naturalistic physiognomy, a trompe l’oeil of monumental stone, inscribed with text proclaiming Mehmed II’s power, and celebrating the artist’s skill and extraordinary service. In addition, other portraits from this period show Bellini’s deliberate manipulation of Venetian and Islamic iconographies, which allowed him to create a hybrid artistic vocabulary capable of communicating imperial authority to both eastern and western ruling élites. Tatiana Sizonenko, RSA 2012, Panel: Renaissance Portraiture: Identity in Written Words