The acquisition of a Renaissance painting of Mehmed the Conqueror by the municipality of Istanbul, the very city he conquered in 1453, has brought a wave of applause for Ekrem Imamoglu, the city’s media-savvy mayor from the opposition Republican Peoples’ Party. But it has brought an even bigger wave of controversy on whether it was the municipality or the Ministry of Culture and Tourism that should have bought this painting, and whether the painting was overpriced or even authentic.

Imamoglu himself broke the news of the purchase with a June 25 tweet: “A 15th-century portrait of Sultan Mehmed II the Conqueror was bought by the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality at a live auction in London today. We are thrilled and cannot wait to welcome this celebrated work of art in Istanbul soon.”

The painting, acquired at an auction, shows Mehmed II in profile, facing a pale-faced man in Ottoman costume. The Christie’s catalog says that it was made circa 1429-1507 at the workshop of Gentile Bellini, who spent 1480 in Istanbul, doing several paintings of the sultan. The date Nov. 25, 1480, is written in Latin in the lower right corner of the painting. 

The announcement followed a fortnight of who’ll-buy-it ever since Christie’s announced that one of the three known paintings of Mehmed the Conqueror — known as Fatih among Turks — would go up for auction. Some Turkish opinion-leaders predicted that the ruling the Ministry of Culture and Tourism would seek to buy the painting, at a time that President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his cronies pay ever louder lip service to Mehmed II’s conquest of Istanbul and his decision to turn the city’s monumental Hagia Sophia church into a mosque. Istanbul’s conquest has been an integral part of Erdogan’s rhetoric that aims to evoke ancestral pride in having reigned over Christians and the city’s conquest is celebrated with extravagant festivities every year on May 29.