Sultan Mahmud II

After his dress reform in 1828, the sultan is depicted in a frock coat, trousers, mantle and fez which is a way of dressing spread throughout the empire. The inscription on the upper right side of the painting, "Cennet-mekan Gazi Sultan Mahmud Han-ı Sani" (The Warrior Sultan Mahmud Khan II, who now rules in Paradise), tells that the portrait was done after his death. Sultan Mahmud II commissioned many portraits of himself, standing, at full-length and half-length, with the aim of having them hung in state offices, and in this new iconography to the portraiture of Ottoman Sultans, which was in the manner of the European ruler portraiture tradition.