Süleyman I & Khair ad-Din Barbarossa
Portraits of Suleiman the Magnificent, the sultan of the Ottoman Empire, were extremely popular in Western Europe. He was viewed in the west with a mixture of fear and admiration. Melchior Lorck sojourned in Constantinople (today’s Istanbul) for several years and made a portrait of the sultan there on 15 February 1559, which he later used as the starting point for this engraving.