The Bellini Card

by Jason Goodwin Book 3 in the Yashim the Ottoman Detective series.

First published 2008

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3.8(2,168)

Istanbul, 1840. The new sultan hears that Gentile Bellini’s lost portrait of Mehmed II may have resurfaced in Venice. Because an expensive purchase would provoke opposition inside the Ottoman government, Yashim sends his friend Stanislaw Palewski, ambassador of a Poland erased from the map, to investigate in disguise rather than appearing as an official agent of the Porte.

Palewski enters a declining city controlled by Austria, where art dealers, aristocrats and political informers compete for the painting and its secrets. Murders surrounding the search point towards the Contessa d’Aspi d’Istria and a history extending beyond the picture’s value. Yashim eventually joins the inquiry, connecting Venetian intrigue with the Ottoman court’s attempt to recover a visual symbol of the conquest of Constantinople.