Elogia virorum literis illustrium...
Author Paolo Giovio Italian
Woodcuts based on drawings by Tobias Stimmer Swiss
Publisher Peter Perna German
Not on view
This posthumous edition of the historian Paolo Giovio's Elogia is the first to unite his brief biographical sketches with the portraits that inspired them. The high number of Muslim figures included among the military leaders is not surprising given that Giovio wrote a commentary on the Turks in 1532 and included a "Turkish room" in the museum he established in Como. Giovio's portrait of Mehmet II, said to have been derived from a model by Gentile Bellini, shows the influence of Ottoman prototypes that depict the sultan smelling a rose. The profile and folded ear, however, correspond to an Italian medal produced in Constantinople in the 1460s.
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