The article offers a scholarly insight into the friction and cross-pollination that took place between Renaissance and Ottoman-Persian art that formed the basis of his groundbreaking My Name is Red. The book touched on the rivalry between miniaturists and calligraphers for recognition as being the truest depicters of Allah's creation; the former arguing that their work was most representative whereas the latter held that miniaturism was on a par with creation itself and therefore blasphemous.
The miniaturists developed their own code of conduct and elaborate social rituals - the pinnacle being reaching the point of blindness due to the demands of such intricate work, some artists deliberately blinding themselves to reap the honour of a station they didn't merit. The Safavid court's constant presence and the artistic warfare (besides the military warfare) between the competing sultanates is yet another strand Pamuk develops.
The most striking feature of the book though is the narration of the story (a murder mystery) piecemeal, each chapter told by a different character, including animals and inanimate objects.
No other sultan from the golden age of the Ottoman empire, not even Suleyman the Magnificent, has a portrait like this one. With its realism, its simple composition, and the perfectly shaded arch giving him the aura of a victorious sultan, it is not only the portrait of Mehmed II, but the icon of an Ottoman sultan, just as the famous poster of Che Guevara is the icon of a revolutionary.At the same time, the highly worked details - the marked protrusion of the upper lip, the drooping eyelids, the fine feminine eyebrows and, most important, the thin, long, hooked nose - make this a portrait of a singular individual who is none the less not very different from the citizens one sees in the crowded streets of Istanbul today. The most famous distinguishing feature is that Ottoman nose, the trademark of a dynasty in a culture without a blood aristocracy.
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