Most likely painted during Gentile Bellini's two-year sojourn at the court of Mehmet II in Istanbul, this portrait identifies the sultan as Victor Orbis, Conqueror of the World. Fittingly, an arch—the universal symbol of triumph—surrounds the sitter, who is dressed in a red kaftan, a dark brown fur mantle, and a voluminous white turban carefully wrapped around a red taj, his signature headdress and a mark of his status as a Muslim. Despite its relatively poor condition and extensive retouching, the painting remains essential to our understanding of the sultan's self-image. At the same time, it confirms Gentile Bellini's status as un buon depentor che sepia retrazer (an excellent painter who knows how to make a portrait).

Between 1511 and 1520, Carpaccio and his workshop decorated the meeting hall of the Scuola di Santo Stefano in Venice with scenes from the life of its patron, the earliest Christian martyr, Saint Stephen. Four of the five original canvases survive, and two are reunited on this wall. Second in the cycle, this painting depicts a youthful Stephen, striking an orator's pose upon a crumbling ancient pedestal and preaching to an attentive, multicultural crowd. Among the men are Christian pilgrims from western Europe, Greeks from the Byzantine empire, and Turks from Ottoman lands, while the women are all Mamluks. Four of the five women have pulled back their veils so that their tarturs (tall brimless and ornamented hats) and faces are exposed, which, as Muslims, they typically would not have done in public.

This narrow painting was probably part of a series of canvases illustrating scenes from Torquato Tasso's Gerusalemme liberata painted by Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, the father of Giovanni Domenico, for a Venetian palace in the 1740s. Political and economic changes at this time caused strained relations between Venice and Islamic lands. The fact that a wealthy patron commissioned a painting with Muslim figures, however, demonstrates that the Near East still inspired thoughts of wealth and exotic travels for the Western elite at this time.

Carpaccio used and reused the Muslim figures that he drew on this sheet in many of his paintings, including those from the Scuola di Santo Stefano cycle. Two of these figures—the one farthest to the left and the other third from the left—wear the zamt, a Mamluk bonnet made of fur. The others are crowned with the kind of turbans worn in the Ottoman empire, which are tightly wound around a taj, a small scull cap.

Beginning in the mid-sixteenth century, Turkish acrobats performed a spectacle known as the Flight of the Turk—il volo del Turco—on a tightrope in the small piazza before Venice's Ducal Palace during the pre-Lenten festival of Carnival. The act served not just as amusement but also as a moral commentary, for Venetians considered such street performers to be uncivil and full of vice. In the playful and uninhibited atmosphere of Carnival, Venetians expressed their ambivalence about their Muslim neighbors and trading partners through this spectacle.

In preparation for military battle, Ottoman Turkish cavalrymen often learned cirit, a dangerous equine game that later developed into a highly engaging court spectacle. Riders took great risks by riding backwards, vaulting, and somersaulting on horses galloping at full speed. This intriguing print of a cirit rider is attributed to Francesco Basilicata, a cartographer and military engineer for the Venetian Republic, a man well aware of the formidability of the Turkish cavalry and its importance within the Ottoman military.

This magnificent little relief, which could be held in the hand or hung on a wall, is a product of the sophisticated and learned milieu of Renaissance Venetian humanists. It depicts Aristotle, seated on the right beneath a tree, directly addressing his commentator Alexander, who stands on the left holding an open book. Aristotle wears a brimmed round hat like that often used in Venetian art to denote a figure's Greek origin, while Alexander, though he too was Greek, is crowned with a turban in the Ottoman style. In the art of Venetian humanist circles, the turban often evokes the wisdom and learning of the figure wearing it, identifying him as a veritable hakim, or sage. In Venice, where access to the writings of Aristotle and other classical authors came in part through Arabic translations and commentaries, the ancient and Islamic traditions mingled with one another. Making sharp distinctions between the two cultures evidently was not yet considered important or even necessary.

This object belongs to a group of Ottoman military trophies captured by Francesco Morosini (1618–94), admiral of the Venetian fleet, on campaigns in the eastern Mediterranean during the second half of the seventeenth century. Today preserved in the Museo Civico Correr, the Morosini trophies are the largest and most important holdings of Ottoman arms and military equipment in Italy. This circular shield is constructed, in typical Ottoman fashion, of a length of cane coiled around a wooden disk, with the cane wrapped in colored thread and the center reinforced with a domed metal boss, which bears a Qur'anic inscription. The textile has an intricate radial pattern rendered in white, pale yellow, pale brown, blue, and silver against a deep red ground. The richness of the decoration suggests that a Turkish soldier of high rank once carried this shield.

In the Islamic world, these small metal balls inlaid with gold and silver were used as incense burners in court settings. Literary references tell how they were rolled over silk carpets to produce aromatic—and highly atmospheric—vapors. In Venice and elsewhere in Europe, on the other hand, these kinds of objects appear to have been most often used as hand warmers, although here too they could contain musk or amber burned as incense.

This object belong to a group of Ottoman military trophies captured by Francesco Morosini (1618–94), admiral of the Venetian fleet, on campaigns in the eastern Mediterranean during the second half of the seventeenth century. Today preserved in the Museo Civico Correr, the Morosini trophies are the largest and most important holdings of Ottoman arms and military equipment in Italy. This bow case was probably originally accompanied by a matching quiver, the two pieces forming a garniture that had been essential equipment for mounted archers in Asia and the Middle East for centuries. The fact that Morosini was active in Greece and the eastern Mediterranean suggests that this bow case may be provincial Ottoman, possibly Balkan, in origin.

This object belong to a group of Ottoman military trophies captured by Francesco Morosini (1618–94), admiral of the Venetian fleet, on campaigns in the eastern Mediterranean during the second half of the seventeenth century. Today preserved in the Museo Civico Correr, the Morosini trophies are the largest and most important holdings of Ottoman arms and military equipment in Italy. This flask is typical of seventeenth-century Ottoman military equipment in that it is an essentially utilitarian object transformed into a luxury good through the use of richly embroidered textiles.