Rare portraits of Turkish rulers sold for record price

LONDON

A series of artworks featuring rare portraits of some Ottoman sultans and Amir Timur, which were found in the attic of a mansion in Scotland, have been sold for 1.3 million British pounds at an auction held in the United Kingdom.

Comprising the portraits of Ottoman Sultans Suleiman I, Bayezid, Bayezid II, Murad II, Mehmed I and Timur, a Turco-Mongol conqueror who founded the Timurid Empire in and around modern-day Iran and Central Asia, the collection was sold to a person whose identity was not disclosed by the British auction house Sotheby’s.

The oil-on-canvas paintings made in the 16th century became the highest-selling work at the auction house.

The series are based on the Giovio Series, which is a set of rulers and states people assembled by Paolo Giovio, a 16th-century Italian Renaissance historian and biographer.

The original series have not survived intact, but copies made for Cosimo I de’ Medici between 1552 and 1568 are at the Galleria degli Uffizi in Florence.

The collection, which has reportedly not come to light for more than a hundred years, was discovered in a mansion built in the late 18th century, near the Scottish town of Jedburgh.

These portraits were probably bought by William Kerr, the third Earl of Lothian, and were once hung in the Great Hall of Newbattle Abbey from the 17th to the early 20th centuries.

A painting of Hürrem Sultan, the chief consort and legal wife of Suleiman II, has also been put up for sale a couple of months ago and sold for 126,000 pounds.