This painting is one of a series that seems originally to have been collected or perhaps even painted for one particular album. Only one of the portraits has an inscription identifying the ruler represented (Sultan Selim); the others, like this one, have a cartouche at the top of the miniature which perhaps was meant to contain an inscription. The sultan is represented alone without any assisting figures, seated on a carpet in a room with tile decoration, depicted in the typical fashion of the late sixteenth-century Turkish school.

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