 Nid yw'r president, gallwch yn gychaf, nid yw'n cael ei wneud, ond nid ddim yn du'r rhaglen. Y cwmgyst Y Konstantyn Obo, bydd y Oatryman Tewch, a'r 29 mai 1453, yn ychydig o'r ddefnyddoedd y bydd yn gweithio i'r holl yma, a'r holl yn bwysig yn gwneud. Mae'r rhaid o'r ffordd yng Nghymru, yng nghymru, mech Mechmedd II. Mae'r ffordd o'r panfodol yma, a ddechrau'r ffordd o'r ffordd mhwyaf mhwyaf mhwyaf, o'r ffordd o'r ffordd mhwyaf mhwyaf mhwyaf, yn ym 1313. Mechmedd wedi'u gweld yn 1451 oed, a'r ffordd o'r ffordd 19. Mae'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd was based primarily in the pursuit of holy war and the spread of Islam. The taking of Constantinople merely a prelude to territorial ambitions that would cast dark shadows across Europe over the following 30 years. The Ottomans became the most powerful presence in the Islamic world, defining Mehmed's reputation for future generations, described as religious as well as deeply superstitious. He was an avid reader of classical and contemporary texts with interests that also included theology, astronomy and poetry. While an inclination for western art, unusual for someone of the Muslim faith, has further informed his colourful legacy. The invitation for Italian artists to visit the Ottoman court in the latter part of Mehmed's life has left us with the well-known oil by Gentile Bellini, a watercolour depicting Mehmed the esteet smelling a rose, as well as a group of portrait medals. After casts of those by Bellini and Bertoldo, and an adaptation of Constanzo's portrait helped to satisfy a growing interest in Mehmed the conqueror, which would endure long after his death in 1481 at the age of almost 50. These elderly portraits have represented the only reliable iconographic sources. But impressive though they are in number, they have told us little of the young Mehmed, and that pivotal point in the history of the Ottomans and central Europe 25 years earlier, which continues to reverberate. The unexpected appearance of a far earlier portrait, for long in an old continental collection, has provided an entirely fresh perspective from which to consider the Ottoman prince, amidst a period notable for the absence of material evidence. Taken at a time when Mehmed was barely into adulthood and largely unknown beyond the Ottoman court, it confirms his interest in the medallic genre at a far earlier point in his life than previously thought, and represents an extraordinary alliance between consonants and cultures. It draws its influence from an art form synonymous with the Italian Renaissance. But it also engages, though less obviously, with far earlier traditions that are both Islamic and Judeo-Christian in affiliation, with a portrait encircled by a nominative inscription and cast in the permanence of bronze or lead. Medallic art was a new and distinctive form of evidential record. Proceeding the development of woodcut illustration and movable type, it drew interest from an Italian audience of humanist scholars and antiquaries, merchant classes and princely families. But unlike coinage, whoever wished could now be immortalised in this fashion by the spatula and crucible. One of its earliest and most influential practitioners was a celebrated North Italian draftsman and painter Pisanella, whose medals date from the late 1430s. Mehmed himself was born just a few years earlier in 1432 in the Old Ottoman capital of Edirne. The son of Sultan Murad II and Siddhu Mahatun, an enslaved convert of non-Muslim origin. And his early adolescence was largely spent in Manisa near the Aegean. Forming the mainstay of Muslim ambition over the centuries was the city of Constantinople, strategically situated between Europe and Asia, and to where the Roman emperor, Constantine the Great, had transferred his capital from Rome around 330 AD. Since the 5th century, it had been the epicentre of the Byzantine Empire, whose disparate lands in Syria, Persia and North Africa had been subjected to diminution by Muslim incursions. Many unsuccessful Muslim attempts would also be made on Constantinople over the centuries, including those by the Ottomans, and most recently by Mehmed's father in 1422. Over the following 20 years, it would become entirely surrounded by the territory of this increasingly powerful tribe. An international forum convened in Ferrara in 1438 by Pope Eugenius IV, sought reconciliation of the eastern and western churches, and a universal crusade against the Ottomans. The convention had attracted much international interest, and Pisanello recorded the event in a series of drawings. He also made this imposing medal of one of the delegates, John VIII paleologus, the Byzantine emperor, affirming his leadership of this fragmented empire. In the spring of 1444, Mehmed was appointed regent of the province of Rumelia under the supervision of the sultan's grand vizier following the death of his older brother Aledin a year earlier. A significant Ottoman victory near Varna later that year may have encouraged Morab II to announce the throne entirely in favour of Mehmed. Not yet 13 years of age, the young prince was now sole ruler of the Ottoman state in what would be his first accession. As his biographer Franz Pabbinga observed, Mehmed would become a law unto himself, both by land and by sea. Having, for example, confirmed a treaty in February 1446 with the Venetians, initiated by his father. In circumstances that are not entirely clear, plans for an ill-advised attack on Constantinople hatched by a military faction attempting to influence the adolescent Mehmed, persuaded Morab to return a sultan in the autumn of 1446, effectively deposing his own son. Mehmed served as governor of Manisa over the following five-year interregnum, ruling the province as a sultan in his own right. And finally acceded to the Ottoman throne on the death of his father in February 1451, not yet 20 years of age. The medal was attracting growing interest with those of more than 40 different sitters having been produced in the 1440s by the Italian workshops of Piscinello and his pupil or close follower Matteo de Pasti. They include these portraits of Leonela Deste and Alfonso V and Sigismundo Malatesta and Isota de Liati. As a documentary record, as well as a medium for messaging and propaganda, they were produced in multiple castes and variously distributed, with some, for example, having been deposited in the cornerstones of new buildings. Specimens of Piscinello's medal of John VIII were being carried by envoys, as they were documents within Italy and beyond, and endorsed the sitter's long Byzantine lineage with Constantinople. A sense of vulnerability would be increasingly justified, for the capture of Constantinople had now become the focus of the hugely ambitious Mehmed following his deposition in 1446. In the elaboration of these plans over the following five years, the Ottoman prince would also embrace the medallic medium. However, the form that this was to take uniquely differed in its purpose and function to the medals of his Italian contemporaries, which were being made in their multiples for third-party consumption. The inscriptions around Mehmed's portrait on the bronze relief largely concur with those recently used on the treaty signed with Venice, and on a casket commissioned on the death of his mother in 1449. The flan measures between 90 and 92 millimetres across, and has a reddish-brown patina whose surfaces are entirely free of tooling or subsequent alteration. While small traces of wax provide residual evidence of the original model, a carefully positioned suspension hole not only enables Mehmed's portrait to hang at a perpendicular, but avoids masking any of the characters in the 46-lettered inscription, which it divides with equal measure. The Ottoman prince wears an ermine-coloured robe, or kaftan, upon which are signs and symbols of uncertain, though possibly calligraphic form. While similar elements are also incorporated within his hair and finely detailed turban. The formalised portrait finds some parallels with Roman imperial portraiture, such as that of the 2nd century Emperor Commodus. The portrait's compelling realism and the manner of its modelling suggest it to have been sketched from the life, but it is uncertain whether this was by an artist invited from the west, or one native to the Ottoman court. The style of portrait and lettering most closely accord with the work of Pietro D'Amelano and Francesco Lorana, who were medallists and sculptors in the 1440s in Ragusa. They came to Naples around 1452, and may have formed an ad hoc team in Pisanello's workshop. But what they produced at this time is without signature. Although there is little stylistically to connect the relief with Pisanello, her signed medallic work ceases in the 1440s. It is possible that he played an advisory role in developing a design that had been drafted at the Ottoman court. While an artist is yet to be firmly ascribed to the relief, the pleasing sense of texture and the characterisation of the portrait confirm it to be modelled by a skilled hand and factured in an experienced workshop, able to deal with such niceties as finish and patination. This is believed to have occurred sometime in the late 1440s or early 1450s. Constantinople had been subject to numerous Muslim attempts over an 1100-year period. And in 1204 suffered sacking and occupation during the Christian Crusade. By the mid-15th century, it represented the dying embers of the Byzantine Empire. And its inhabitants had become steeped with prophetic doom. Under quite different circumstances, aspects of Ottoman life had also been embedded with the prophetic culture, which was being facilitated by a network of religious scholars and mystics. One such figure was the Arabic letterist, Abdo al-Rahman al-Bistami, who had a preoccupation with apocalyptic themes and is described as a cultivator and disseminator of such material. The annual calendars and astrological compendia completed in the first two years of Mehmed's accession in 1451 were a spectacular manifestation of this culture and provided guidance to the Ottoman House as to future occurrences and events. The taking of Constantinople had featured in sacred and secular Muslim legend over the centuries, being one of the feats to be accomplished by the Messianic conqueror, with one particular hardist stating that the first among my people who will conquer the city of the Caesar will have their sins forgiven. It is in this climate that this relief was conceived, on which a prognosticative illusion, taking the form of alpha omega, has been inserted within the folium design of Mehmed's woven cap. The first and last letters of the Greek alphabet represent a metaphor for the beginning and end, occurring in the book of Revelation and making appearances in Christian art. The model in inspiration for its placement of this relief may have been provided by the Syracuse decadrams of the 4th century BC, which is signed in much the same place by its artist Caimong. The Ottoman Turks were an apocalyptic people and the fall of Constantinople was believed to be a sign of the approaching end. A witness to the culmination of history and the emergence of the Ottoman House. Thus, with some ingenuity, a vision long held in the Muslim subconscious had now achieved physical representation, embedded within the portrait of Mehmed himself. This heroic embodiment recalls Ali Alexander the Great, Mehmed's enduring role model. The Ottoman prince now presenting himself as the rightful successor to the new role of Constantin the Great. The addition of the feather, or a gred, incongruously positioned behind the woven cap, resonates with Roger Crowley's recent description of the young Mehmed, as a gazi warrior leading jihad against the infidels. The artist engaged in the relief was amidst a culture influenced by occultists and mystics, and upon whom it had been observed, men rely to tell them the future. It finds remarkably close parallels with the Tudor Court of Queen Elizabeth I, a century later, where Dr John Dee, the alchemist and occult philosopher, practised his own trade in divination, straddling science and magic in a direct read across to the Ottoman court of Mehmed. D's biographer, Francis Yates, describes this dominant philosophy of the age penetrating profound spheres of knowledge with visionary plans and the casting of horoscopes and an attempt to bring about the apocalyptic unity of mankind. I lied to this prophetic culture and deeply inculcated in Islamic society as it was in other faiths and traditions, was a talisman or amulet, offering a subliminal power and protection, it manifested itself in any manner of type or form, as objects inscribed with astrological references, religious narratives, and inscriptions thought relevant would affect, as Heather Coffey has described it, corporeal propinquity. Miniature books and amuletic silver were deemed beneficial to their wearers. And Mehmed's grand vizier, Mehmed Passar, is said to have always worn a magic square talisman to protect himself. An undergarment worn during battle also offered protection, and the personalised inscription on an example belonging to Mehmed's son further illustrates the relevance of his astrological exactitude, recording as it does the exact times of its commencement and completion. As well as the position of the sun. Neatly pierced at the top and without need for a design on its reverse, the medallic form was no less suitable for such adaptation. The addition of a portrait, if a little unorthodox for a Muslim sitter, was clearly a novel and irresistible attraction to Mehmed. Visual evidence for the wearing of a talisman in the 15th century is rare, but coincidentally or not, one such illustration is provided by Giovanni di Bartoldo's Medal of Mehmed. A commission from Lorenzo de Medici to the Sultan, who in 1480 was planning an audacious attack on Otranto in southern Italy and the conquest of a new kingdom. Scholars have grappled in their interpretation of the object hanging from the sultan's neck, which has been variously referred to as a pendant, a crescent, a medallion with a crescent moon, a crescent pendant and regalia, while there can be no certainty as to precisely what this represents. The significance of the depiction is to confirm the sultan's propensity to wear an object of talismanic form and to do so in this manner. The talisman is believed to have contributed to the great Muslim victory at Badra in 624. Leading to the overnight transformation of Mohammed from a mecan outcast to a major leader, praise be unto him, its significance could scarcely have been lost on Mehmed, who was himself about to embark on an enterprise in which his Ottoman forebears had all failed and upon which observed the sultan's biographer Cretovolus, he had much elaborated. The capture of Constantinople presented many strategic difficulties for Mehmed and his military advisers. But solutions to these obstacles famously included the erection of a fortress on the Bosphorus Straits, the conveyance of gallies across land, the building of a pontoon bridge and the employment of a revolutionary siege cannon. Prior to the engagement of Ottoman force, believed to have been some 60,000 strong and outnumbering the besieged inhabitants by 10 to 1. Consultation with the court's astrologer in order to confirm military decisions took place. While during the 53-day siege itself, the mystic Sufi Aksem Semadin provided Mehmed with divine signs he had seen prophesying victory. The grandeur of Mehmed's entry into Constantinople on 29 May 1453, which is said to have been made on a white horse, defines the sense of empire that would envelop every aspect of Ottoman rule. The title of Imperator having now been adopted on all documents, referring to Mehmed 25 years later as Turkorum Imperator. Constantinople's medal embodies that culture as did all such medallic portraits. Reliable observations of Mehmed at the time of his youth are rare, but an early reference to his upraised head and just-grown youthful beard, described as being of reddish hue, resonates with the magnus prinkeps portrait. The leanness of his face, neck and upper body and perhaps most notably his posture clearly separate themselves from the later portraits. Marking as they do, the physical changes that Mehmed would start to undergo in his 30s, suffering from bestial corpulence, as well as inherited gout and general ill health. Constantinople's portrait of Mehmed believed to have been taken when he was in his mid-40s. Moved one scholar to suggest that it provides a sense of the ruler who ceased Constantinople for the Ottomans. As an exercising propaganda, it was a clear success. For the magnus prinkeps portrait, now demonstrates how very different the sultan actually looked at the time of conquest 25 years earlier. Another portrait believed to have been of Mehmed from the life seems to have been based on no more than a poor sketch or the imagination, made in the late 1460s or 1470s when a law for the Grand Turk was taking hold but knowledge of his appearance was scant. It veers uneasily between caricature and stereotype. The artist responsible for this engraving was similarly unfazed by the absence of a reliable image of the sultan. On this occasion, Pisanello's medallic profile of John VIII forms the basic model on which to build a suitably exotic image of the Grand Turk. Made for Mehmed's private use at the very beginning of his career and when little known beyond the Ottoman court, there is no reason for considering the magnus prinkeps portrait to be anything other than an entirely faithful and unpoliticised account of its sitter. With interest in Christian art, which included drawings and books, it is no surprise that the medallic form should have also caught Mehmed's fascination. In trust as he was by the portrait and the ability of artists to conjure up living beings driven by superstition and prophecies concerning his future as a world conqueror. This novel medium provided a personal vehicle through which could be invoked by the words of the prophet, praise be unto him. While as a talisman, its divine power would remain undiminished. It could be seen as a repost to Pisanello's medall of John VIII, with the Ottoman prince now staking his own claim on the millennium old empire of Constantine the Great and the New Rome. With previous Muslim attempts having all ended in failure, including those by Mehmed's father and grandfather, it is little wonder that the significance of its capture had embedded itself in Mehmed at such an early age, with elements of resolve and self-belief palpable in this personal manifesto. Pisanello's medall might well have been the catalyst for its facture, but other influences during Mehmed's adolescence at Manisa some six or seven years earlier are likely to have defined an interest in this art form that would endure and to which these early sketches betraying their Western influence have been associated. There was no indigenous Islamic model upon which a formalised portrait such as this could be based, but the extent to which it engages with Western classicism suggests the influence of a collaborator and one likely to have had knowledge of Roman and Greek coinage. The well-traveled merchant antiquary, Syriac Vancona, is a possible candidate, intimately familiar with the Eastern Mediterranean and passionately interested in its ancient past. He had been granted free passage throughout the Ottoman territory by Mehmed's father Murad in the mid-1440s. Syriac was zealous in his espousal of Rome and its administrative structure and the belief that its coinage and representation of classical figures provided an admirable model for contemporary society of every hue. The remarkable nature of this project and its unprecedented conjunction between East and West seemed to closely align with these interests and with someone whose additional credentials included those of diplomat and spy. With no protocol governing the direction of Mehmed's portrait, one wonders why they all face left. Might it simply reflect a personal preference rigidly adhered to over a 30-year period? Or might this apparent intransigence be more easily explained by territorial ambition? Mehmed, having famously pronounced that while Alexander had marched his armies east, he would reverse that tide of history and march those of Islam West. The surviving iconography is impressive for its period and would indeed be even richer, had yet another attempt by Mehmed to secure a medal of himself in the early 1460s being successful. Having commissioned the services of Mattia de Pasti for this purpose, the artist was all-rubed to Istanbul and is sitting from Mehmed. But fate was to intervene with his arrest by the Venetians, believing him to be a spy. Although the intended medal did not come to fruition, the episode is nonetheless significant in pointing to this continuum of Mehmed's interests and illustrating the degree to which his appreciation of the portrait image was already known beyond his own court, having been thus complemented by de Pasti's patron, Sigismundor Malatesta. It further suggests that many drawings and sketches of Mehmed are likely to have been taken over the course of his lifetime, but whose absence might be explained simply by ephemeral fragility. Amidst the business of empire building, Mehmed had the time and inclination to indulge more aesthetic pleasures, and this entransement with the portrait reveals a humanist streak absent from many of his European contemporaries, let alone Muslim successes to the Ottoman throne. Little wonder that his iconoclast son Bayezid believed his father's liberalism towards the arts amounted to no more than godlessness. The sense of independence accords with the self-confidence recently ascribed to Mehmed by Cornel Fleisha, with regard to the commissioning of the astrological compendia at much the same time as the bronze relief. Both genres represent internal Ottoman sources from an extremely early period of his life, to which he would return on subsequent occasions. The ease with which Mehmed embraced multiculturalism is further conveyed, though on a somewhat grander scale, by the many architects, designers and craftsmen from both the east and west, employed in the reconstruction of Istanbul soon after the conquest, incorporating, as they did, Ottoman, Roman and Byzantine elements, as well as those of the Italian Renaissance. Mehmed's interest in the Christian world is set to have extended no further than his desire for its conquest. But though his establishment of an independent state and the means by which it was achieved find uncomfortable parallels with events around us today, they are in fact little different to what was similarly occurring in Christian Europe at that time. The sanctuary that Mehmed provided for persecuted minorities, such as Greeks and Jews, and his interest in cultural heritage suggests the appreciation of how centuries-old tradition might usefully contribute towards the empire that he was in the course of building, an emancipated view perhaps informed by parents with culturally different backgrounds. The belief by Murad II that his 12-year-old son had been ready to take the reins of power in 1444 had never been premature. But following successive failures by both his father and grandfather, Mehmed's meticulously laid plans for the taking of Constantinople had now reached maturity, as had the point at which he would sit for this remarkable portrait. Coming to fruition against seemingly impossible odds and surviving by dint of its fabric, the bronze relief shines an astonishing light upon its sitter and the prevailing culture at his court in the mid-15th century, governed as this was by the fortunes of the Ottoman people and the cataclysm about to engulf those of central Europe. Thank you.