Learning as well as art was key to the sultans’ notions of power. Mehmed and his
successors staffed their cities with men well schooled in Islamic administration and
culture and set up madrasas to teach the young. For himself, Mehmed commissioned
a copy of Homer’s Iliad in Greek, epic poetry in Italian, and other literary works by
Turkish, Persian, and European writers. His zeal for scholarship was on a lesser scale
but not very different in kind from that of the Florentine ruler Cosimo de’ Medici
(1389–1464), who in the mid-fifteenth century took over the nearly one thousand
volumes of ancient Greek and Latin texts that had been collected with painstaking
care by the humanist Niccolò Niccoli (1364–1437). Open to all, the Medici library
became the model for princely bibliophiles throughout Italy and elsewhere. Calls for
further crusades against the infidel Turks (in 1455 and 1459, for example) were in
this sense “family disputes,” attempts to contest the East’s right to common notions
of power and legitimacy.
THE NORTHERN RENAISSANCE
Northern Europe shared the same notions, but here the symbols of authority and
piety were even more eclectic. Burgundy—an hourglass with its top in Flanders, its
bottom just above the Alps—embraced nearly all the possibilities of Renaissance
culture. Although Gothic style persisted in northern Europe, especially in architecture,
the Greco-Roman world also beckoned. Ancient themes—especially the deeds of
heroes, whether real or mythical—were depicted on tapestries that provided lustrous
backdrops for rulers of every stripe. The dukes of Burgundy traveled from one end
of their dominions to the other with such tapestries in tow. Weavings lined their tents
during war and their boats during voyages. In 1459 Philip the Good bought a series
of fine tapestries—woven in silk spiced with gold and silver threads—depicting the
History of Alexander the Great (see Plate 8.8). Reading this tapestry from left to
right, we see a city besieged, the trumpeters, archers, and artillerymen and soldiers
reflecting the realities of fifteenth-century warfare. At the center, Alexander rises to
the sky in a decorated metal cage lifted by four winged griffons. The weaving was
the perfect stage setting for the performance of ducal power. No wonder European
rulers—from English kings to Italian signori (and on to Ottoman sultans)—all wanted
tapestries from Burgundy for their palaces.
