^#smrgSAHAF Constantinople and the Orientalists CİLTLİ - 2002

The impact of the conquest of Constantinople in 1453 by an Islamic society unfamiliar to the West ant its takeover of the wealthy Byzantine Empire -once a central concern of all European polities- had major repercussions on both the history and culture of Europe. With this transfer of power to the Ottomans, the East moved closer to the West, and the Ottoman Empire now acted as the gateway to the Orient for the West. The role of middleman between the Ottoman Empire and the West was first assumed by Venice, and Venetians presented the first authentic images of the Islamic World to the West. In his study on Venice and the East, Julian Raby states that the Venetians' graphic knowledge of the Ottomans originated with the Ottoman merchants and officials in Venice or Gentile Bellini. Though Venetian artists modelled the individual Oriental types on the Ottoman subjects who chanced to find themselves in Venice, they were unable to furnish a realistic setting. As for Bellini, invited to Istanbul by Sultan Mehmed II to depict the private world of the Court, he apparently executed no paintings of the city or local scenes of daily life. Europe had to wait until the mid-sixteenth century for its first views of the city of Istanbul and the Ottoman world. (Kitaptan)