Introduction

In the sixteenth century, Venice was the gateway into Europe for products from the Islamic world. Venetian merchants had sailed the Mediterranean ever since the ninth century, creating trade routes between Venice, Constantinople and other ports of the Eastern Mediterranean and the Iberian Peninsula. The fall of Constantinople to Ottoman forces in 1453 challenged Venice’s political and commercial domination of the Adriatic Sea and the Eastern Mediterranean. 

Despite this budding rivalry, Venice still enjoyed strong commercial and diplomatic relations with the Eastern Mediterranean. Diplomats, and the painter Gentile Bellini, were sent by the Doge to the court of the sultan Mehmet II, bringing back written and visual testimonies of life there. Venetian merchants had direct experience of the Middle East, as they travelled to Alexandria, Damascus and Constantinople regularly, sometimes spending years at a time abroad. The exotic products flooding the Venetian market inspired painters, who gradually inserted them into their works. Due to their places of origin, they were associated with holy characteristics, and often appeared in religious scenes.