The Sultan Djem no doubt had a suite which included women, and Pintoricchio would have had no difficulty in finding models. We can hardly doubt, apart from tradition, that the painter _did_ intend the very prominent Greek in his fresco to represent Paleologos, who would so obviously balance the other distinguished refugee at the opposite corner; but if so, why copy an old drawing of thirteen years earlier, when it was essential to secure a portrait, and when Paleologos himself was always about the court? The same remark holds good of the drawing of the Turks. With so many Turks in Rome in 1493, and all the town wild about them, is it probable that Pintoricchio should have had recourse for them to old drawings by Bellini? On the other hand, the style of the drawings has no resemblance whatever to that of Pintoricchio, though I cannot see much more to Gentile Bellini. I am inclined to think that the attribution to this last is an arbitrary one, and arises from his having been known to have visited the East, but that the drawings were supplied to Pintoricchio by a third person unknown, probably one of his assistants, whom he commissioned to procure sketches.
[Illustration: _Anderson photo_] [_Borgia Apartments, Vatican, Rome_
GROUP OF HEADS (A detail from the "Dispute of St. Catherine")]
The figure on the Emperor's left, in Turkish dress, has usually been taken for Prince Djem, the younger son of the Sultan Mahommed II., but as it is on record that Djem closely resembled his father, and as we have an excellent likeness of the latter in Gentile Bellini's famous portrait (now in Lady Layard's possession), we are able to identify Djem in the much more striking personage, the fierce and stately prince on horseback on the extreme right. It was as a hostage that Innocent VIII. brought him to Rome in 1489. We have plenty of evidence of how "el Gran Turco" struck the fancy of the Romans. All the Chronicles of the time, the letters and diaries of Ambassadors, are full of descriptions of his dress and person, and of the gay hunting parties which the Pope used to give in his honour. Mantegna has left a graphic description of his appearance in a letter written from Rome in 1485, in which he speaks of his fierce aspect, his wonderful seat on a horse, and his turban made of "thirty thousand ells of fine linen."