Rare portraits of Ottoman sultans to be sold at London auction

LONDON

British auction house Christie’s will offer collectors a chance to purchase the rare portraits of six Ottoman sultans - Orhan Gazi, Bayezid I, Isa Chelebi, Mehmed I, Selim I and Selim II - when they go under the hammer on Oct. 28.

The portraits are expected to fetch a total of 800,000 to 1.2 million pounds ($1.1 million - $1.64 million).

The portraits were part of a set produced in Venice in 1579 at the instigation of Ottoman Grand Vizier Sokollu Mehmed Pasha.

Behnaz Atighi Moghaddam, an expert from Christie’s, told the state-run Anadolu Agency that the portraits were part of 14 paintings from the 16th century.

The Art of the Islamic and Indian Worlds auction will also showcase a message sent to King Louise of France by Mehmet IV, Turkish carpets, Kaaba covers, İznik tiles, manuscripts and embroidered pots.

Moghaddam said the paintings were “stylistically attributed to Veronese,” one of the most famous Venetian artists who produced works in the 16th century.

Louise Broadhurst, the director and the head of Oriental Rugs and Carpets Department at Christie’s, said the auction would present three Turkish carpets from the late 16th and 17th centuries.

Broadhurst told Anadolu Agency that the carpets have a Lotto design -- a design first depicted by 16th-century Italian painter Lorenzo Lotto -- and show the “cross-cultural exchange of art traveling from Turkey through across to the West on the trade routes.”

She added that the carpets were very popular in the 16th century and used to decorate tables in wealthy Italian palaces.