Nothing is known about how much Ambrosius Francken knew about the cultural background of the Mamluk carpet, which he used as a decoration for his "Last Supper". The painting can only be roughly dated to the 16th century. The use of the central medallion of an Oriental carpet to highlight the nimbus of Christ, however, represents a special case: The use of the motif could either have resulted from a mere similarity of the two pictorial patterns, but it can also be understood as an assertion of Renaissance Christian predominance. Europeans had reasons to fear the Islamic world: in 1529 Suleiman the Magnificent was besieging Vienna, and the Ottoman Empire remained a constant threat to Western Europe until the late 17th century.