Anonymous: Sultan Suleyman the Magnificent Wearing the Jewel-Studded Helmet (1540–50)

(Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, USA)

An engraving made by an unknown Italian artist. This print shows the Ottoman sultan Süleyman I 'the Magnificent' (1494 – 1566) wearing an elaborate Venetian headpiece. The helmet was probably commissioned by Grand Vizier Ibrahim Pasha, together with his chief advisors, İskender Çelebi, the chief treasurer, and the Venetian jewellry merchant Alvise Gritti. The Venetian goldsmith Luigi Caorlini and his partners produced the helmet. It was made from gold, and decorated with diamonds, forty-seven rubies, twenty-seven emeralds, forty-nine pearls, and a large turquois. The large headpiece was designed to project the sultan's power in the context of the Ottoman–Habsburg rivalry. The four tiers of the helmet was also a rebuke to the three-tiered tiara worn by the Pope and advertised Sultan Süleyman’s claim to world domination. It was never worn but displayed at various official occasions. At a later date the crown was dismantled and sold. When the crown was finished it was displayed in the Doge’s Palace in Venice in 1532 during which a drawing was made of it. Print from 1540-1550.