🦋 Something to check
 My Name is Red is set in 1591 -- I am reading Pamuk's essay on "Bellini and the East," from Other Colors, and find out about Bellini's portrait of Sultan Mehmet II, dated 1480. I don't remember any specific reference to this painting in My Name is Red, but I am sure now that there must have been some -- I must have passed over it as something unfamiliar, not bothered to look it up.
Pamuk says, The portrait has spawned so many copies, variations, and adaptations, and the reproductions made from these assorted images have gone on to adorn so many textbooks, book covers, newspapers, posters, banknotes, stamps, educational posters, and comic books, that there cannot be a literate Turk who has not seen it hundreds if not thousands of times. It seems logical that this painting would have been an important element of the debate about artistic style and representation in the Ottoman empire, a century after it was painted. I should keep an eye out for this next time I read the book.
 (I see that with this entry, Pamuk becomes the first author about whom I've written 100 posts. Not exactly sure what to make of that, beyond that I'm totally gaga about his writing.)
posted morning of Monday, July 7th, 2008
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