BY A FOLLOWER OF CRISTOFANO DELL'ALTISSIMO

This portrait of Suleyman is based on the famous series of portraits of great figures of history which lined the walls of the "Musaeum" of Paolo Giovio on the banks of Lake Como, constructed between 1538 and 1543. Giovio (1483-1552) was an Italian prelate and close confidante of pope Clement VII who spent much of his career failing to unite Christian rulers against the "Turkish threat". Nonetheless, he was sufficiently impressed by the young Suleyman to include in his "Musaeum". The portrait commissioned by Giovio was itself a copy, likely based on portraits on paper by the naval captain and painter Nigari ("The portraitise") Haydar Reis (1492-1572) which were presented to the French admiral Virginio Orsini by Hayreddin Barbarossa in 1543. A 1575 publication of the Giovio series contains a woodcut illustration of Suleyman's portrait by Tobias Stimmer (1539-84; Iovii, op. cit.).

Such was the fame of Giovio's portrait gallery that its contents were copied on multiple occasions by distinguished figures of the age most notably Cosimo de' Medici, who commissioned Cristofano dell'Altissimo to create a copy to hang in the Uffizi some time between 1552 and 1568. Another copy of Giovio's original was also commissioned between 1578 and 1599 by the Habsburg Archduke Ferdinand II of Austria to hang at Schloss Ambras, Innsbruck (published Julian Raby, '... And a Magnificent Suleyman', Cornucopia, issue 62, 2021, p. 21, no. 2).

A portrait of Suleyman after Cristofano dell'Altissimo copied for William Kerr, 3rd Earl of Lothian (1605-75), was sold at Sotheby's London, 20 January 2022, lot 74 and another portrait Sotheby's London, 31 March 2021, lot 58. A further painting from the circle of dell'Altissimo was sold in these rooms, 24 October 2024, lot 99.