Sketches of the Emperor John VIII Palaeologus, a Monk, and a Scabbard

Discussion

FROM THE ART INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO’S CATALOG

Drawings of diversity and importance adorn both sides of this sheet, universally recognized as the work of Pisanello. The verso depicts a carefully drawn Turkish-style quiver with arrows and a bowcase with a bow and arrow. The recto contains two distinctly different subjects and styles: at the top, in the verso’s precise pen style, is an ornamented scabbard; below it, more hastily sketched in pen and brown ink, are a mounted rider in hunting attire and three standing men wearing unusual hats. Adolfo Venturi (1939) first linked this sheet (then in a private collection, Rome) with a similar sketchbook page in the Louvre (M.I. 1062; Fossi Todorow 1966, pls. 68, 70). The Louvre sheet bears an inscription describing the quiver, bow and scabbard drawn on the Chicago sheet, suggesting they were contiguous pages in a sketchbook (Fasanelli 1965). Both sheets document the visit of the Byzantine emperor John VIII Palaeologus and Joseph II, patriarch of the Eastern Orthodox Church, to Ferrara, where a Council of Churches was convened in early 1438. The Council moved in 1439 to Florence and drew together the leaders of the Christian world, both East and West. It focused not only on dogmatic dif

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