It was, supposedly, a later copy of the Bellini portrait.
As for the album of his father’s drawings that Gentile Bellini presented to Sultan Mehmet in 1480, there were, in fact, two. One on paper, bought from a market in Smyrna in 1823, is in the British Museum; the other, finer, album on parchment is in the Louvre.
It was discovered in the attic of a house in Guyenne, France, in 1886.
The Fondaco dei Turchi remained a ruin of sorts until 1860, when it was bought by the municipality and restored to its present condition. Following the restorers’ motto, com’era, dov’era, every effort was made to remodel the building as a Byzantine palace of the twelfth century. Consequently, all traces of its former grandeur, as well as its decay, were efficiently erased. Clad in gray marble sheeting, and remodeled within, it is now perhaps the ugliest building on the Grand Canal.