Venetian relations with the Ottoman Empire were sustained by trade, but punctuated by conflict. In the mid-17th century, the Turks retaliated against the Venetians for attacks on Turkish ships by the Knights Hospitaller of St. John, beginning a quarter-century of war. A Venetian painter depicted the “Action of August 27, 1661,” a battle in which the combined forces of Venice and Malta—22 ships—defeated a Turkish fleet of 36 galleys.
