The artist did the complex sketches and accompanying notes on site, although probably at different moments (for different details of costume are reflected in the text and sketches), during an unknown period of time in the Byzantines' visit to Italy for the council that was held in Ferrara and Florence. (See also the essay by Robert S. Nelson in the exhibition publication.) This council, attempting to unify the Western and Eastern churches, was called by Pope Eugenius IV in September of 1437. It ended on July 5, 1439, with a signed formal proclamation of union. The precise whereabouts of Pisanello during these two years is not at all documented, although he is presumed to have been in Verona (a city under the dominion of Venice) until a breakout of the plague in the autumn of 1438, when he may have fled to Mantua.³ The Paris and Chicago sketchbook pages are considered to be the sole evidence for Pisanello's presumed presence in Ferrara and Florence. In contrast, the whereabouts in Italy of the emperor John VIII Palaiologos (and his entourage) are well documented, from his arrival in Venice on February 8, 1438, to his departure from Florence on August 26, 1439 (Gill 1961). Whether Pisanello undertook the eyewitness sketches of the emperor and his entourage while they were in Ferrara (from March 4, 1438) or in Florence (where the council was moved, on January 16, 1439, due to the plague) will be settled only if a telling document comes to light. It has been argued that the extraordinary portrait medal that Pisanello produced on the basis of the Paris and Chicago drawings may have been done in August 1439 in Florence, during the emperor's month of leisure immediately following the closing of the council; the accounts of Paolo Giovio (1551) and Giorgio Vasari (1568) note that the medal was produced in Florence.⁴ Yet the sketches on the Paris and Chicago pages were not necessarily undertaken with the medal in mind. For example, the color notes of the emperor's clothes that Pisanello inscribed on the drawing now in Paris would have been useful in producing a painting rather than in designing a medal. The Palaiologos medal, for which there were no precedents in the Renaissance for such a work and its design on paper, appears to have been Pisanello's first work as a medalist (although not all scholars agree on this point). The only motif that precisely relates to the design of the medal is the quick sketch of the emperor on horseback dressed in what is presumed to be hunting gear (a quiver with arrows may be visible), seen at the lower right of the Paris recto. A similar portrayal appears on the medal's reverse. The type of large-headed horse with slit nostrils and stumpy body proportions that Pisanello portrayed on the rectos of the Paris and Chicago sheets, as well as on the reverse of the Palaiologos medal, has been convincingly identified as being one of the Russian mounts that the emperor John VIII Palaiologos, an avid and somewhat transgressive hunter (according to the local Ferrarese gentry), bought from Nicolas Gedeles, a Russian delegate to the council, who arrived belatedly in Ferrara in August 1438.⁵ Three other sheets of studies of this type of "Russian" horse have been similarly related to Pisanello's medal (Louvre inv. 2363, 2405, 2468).

Inscribed toward the center of the recto of the Paris page are Pisanello's detailed notes on the various types of costume. Although it is not quite what one might expect from a right-handed artist, Pisanello probably began writing an overall description of the emperor on the right-hand block of text (indicated by the capitalization of the initial letter), continued on the left (with a two-line description of another costume and matching hat that are surely the emperor's), and finished with three slightly separated lines of text concerning the leather accessories of the imperial weapons. (The leather-sheathed saber, bow, darts, bowcase, belt, and quiver of this gear are drawn in large size on the recto and verso of the Chicago sheet.) The precise identification of the remaining motifs has been much contested. Rosamond Mack has most recently, and quite rightly, identified the standing figure with short corkscrew curls seen from the back in the center of the Paris recto as also portraying the emperor, but in a different costume, wearing an Egyptian irz textile (a fabric woven in a state-run factory, here bearing dedicatory inscriptions). This figure also carries a weapon that appears to be a dagger, which is quickly sketched as hanging from his right side. The two incidental sketches of standing figures on the lower left may also represent the emperor.

Toward the upper margin of the Paris recto, the artist elegantly outlined a wide frieze with an inscription in thuluth calligraphy that is perfectly legible (although Pisanello did not know Arabic, he was a superbly accurate observer). Medieval and Renaissance artists usually ornamented paintings with pseudo-Arabic inscriptions that were merely decorative.⁶ Pisanello, in contrast, took considerable pains to figure out the precise spacing of the letters in the thuluth script, scratching first the forms in a preliminary way by indenting the paper with the stylus. The thuluth inscription has been variously translated, but is here substantially revised with respect to previous scholarship: "Glory to our lord the sultan, the ruler, al-Muayyad Abu al-Nasr Shaykh, may his victory [be glorious]," a reference to the Mamlk sultan who reigned in Egypt from 1412 until 1421.⁷ Below is a much narrower band of eight-petal rosettes and a pattern of decorated squares. The type of inscription in thuluth calligraphy, together with the ornamental vocabulary of narrow and wide bands, rosettes, and decorated squares, closely corresponds to designs of Mamlk textiles of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries;⁸ the resemblance to Mamlk metalwork is much less close, contrary to what is often stated in the Pisanello literature. In a Mamlk textile, the inscription would have been repeated side by side, over and over again, along the ornamental border; Pisanello therefore drew only one repeat of it as a shortcut, a practice typical of textile designs in early-fifteenth-century Italian pattern drawings. Pisanello was clearly copying an actual piece of cloth, for even the size of the letters in the thuluth calligraphy seems to be the same as that in an actual fabric. Pisanello's color notes on the textile design (see inscription above) are evidence that the drawing reproduces an actual Mamlk textile and helps substantiate the assumption that Pisanello was drawing the relevant parts of a gown received as a gift by John VIII Palaiologos or his father, the emperor Manuel II Palaiologos, from the Egyptian sultan al-Muayyad Abu al-Nasr Shaykh. Gifts between such rulers were common; a gift, or kaniskion, is mentioned, although it is not described, in an extant letter by one of the successors of al-Muayyad Abu al-Nasr Shaykh (d. 1421) addressed to John VIII Palaiologos.⁹ The gown of irz fabric that was presented by the Egyptian sultan would be the one worn by the emperor in the figure sketch in the lower center of the Paris recto.

The two main studies of male figures in bust length on the other side of the Paris sheet, seen in frontal and three-quarter views, probably represent the same person (a third, barely visible, bust-length figure is sketched on the lower right). The man's middle-aged countenance; the short, forked, scraggly beard; and the almost shoulder-length corkscrew curls of hair all suggest a probable identification of the figure as Emperor John VIII Palaiologos. Moreover, the very tall pillbox type of hat with a prominent peeling brim, a Byzantine hat type, is secular, rather than ecclesiastic.¹⁰ Inexplicably, it was argued by James Fasanelli and Marcell Restle that these male figure studies portray Joseph II, the venerable but frail patriarch of Constantinople, who accompanied the emperor to the council and who flatly refused to genuflect and kiss the foot of the Roman pontiff. At the time of the council he was about eighty years old, and in such poor health that he was unable to attend a number of important events; he died in Florence on June 10, 1439, before the council concluded (Gill 1964). The Paris verso, however, clearly represents a much younger man. Likenesses of the patriarch Joseph show him with very long hair and beard (for example, Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris, Ms. Par. gr. 1783, fol. 98v), whereas a short, forked beard was a kingly attribute (as, for example, in the portrait of Ivan Alexander, king of Bulgaria). Several portrayals of Emperor John VIII Palaiologos document his relatively short, forked beard (Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris, Ms. Par. gr. 1783, and Ms. Par. Suppl. gr. 1188, fol. 4v).

The weapons and leather casings represented in the three large-scale designs on the Chicago sheet appear to be of Mamlk or Ottoman manufacture and were probably part of the emperor's hunting gear.¹¹ A saber (a "simitarra," according to Pisanello's inscribed text on the Louvre page) in a scabbard is seen along the top on the recto, while a bowcase with two darts and a bow (which the artist called a "guaina del larco" in the Louvre inscription) and a quiver packed tightly with arrows (a "turcasso") are both seen upright on the verso. The design of the saber in Pisanello's drawing is very similar to extant Mamlk and Ottoman swords of the early fifteenth century, in particular to one of the finest such specimens, attributed to the sultan Mehmed II (r. 1444–46; 1451–81), now in the Topkap Saray Museum.¹² The style of the three designs of weapons and casings on the Chicago sheet led Michael Vickers to speculate that these objects were presumably acquired in the East and were possibly even diplomatic gifts sent by the "Emir of Karaman," with whom Emperor John VIII attempted to keep peace.¹³ As David Alexander has recently emphasized, it was part of a long-standing tradition for rulers of the Islamic world to present ceremonial arms and armor as gifts to loyal supporters, generals, and foreign rulers.¹⁴ Mack has suggested that John VIII may have worn his oriental accessories prominently during the nonofficial moments of the council (along with the Egyptian irz garment inscribed with a dedication, seen on the Paris sheet), as a kind of propaganda, to demonstrate in a visible way to his prospective Western allies that his authority over Byzantium was recognized by the contemporary Mamlk and Turkoman rulers—even if in actuality his empire was on the brink of collapse owing to the Ottoman invasion.¹⁵

In contrast to the designs of weapons and accessories, the figural drawings on the recto of the Chicago sheet are sketched very rapidly, with little detail, and in a considerably smaller scale. On the extreme left is a man on horseback whose identity is much disputed. Though he is of somewhat ungainly physique, he is splendidly attired in exotic costume. He also wears the same type of hat (a very tall pillbox shape with a prominent peeling brim) that is seen in the bust-length figure sketches on the Paris verso, which most probably represent the emperor John VIII Palaiologos. He carries a sword in a scabbard, and a sheathed bow hangs from his left side. These weapons appear to be more or less the same motifs that are present as large-scale designs along the top of the recto and on the verso of the Chicago sheet. This figure may well be another likeness of the emperor John VIII on horseback, but seen from the left side. The proportions of the body are similar to those in the undisputed equestrian portrait of the emperor on the Paris recto (which shows him from the right side, wearing his hat alla grecanica, with the pointy visor); the figure also calls to mind Pisanello's portrait notes—"sloping shoulders, small in person"—written above the Paris portrait sketch. Somewhat unconvincingly, Fasanelli identified the elaborately costumed figure on horseback in the Chicago recto as a "mounted archer or squire-dwarf" from the emperor's retinue.¹⁶ More improbably still, Adolfo Venturi and some early critics maintained that this figure was a likeness of Joseph II, the ailing octagenarian patriarch of Constantinople (see discussion above, on the Paris sheet).

Toward the center of the Chicago recto is a standing male figure seen from the back in what is apparently Greek ecclesiastical costume—a shovel-type hat and a voluminous, long cloak. It is the only figure labeled on this sheet, above, with a word that has been variously interpreted as chalone (cardinal's hat) or, much more convincingly, as chaloire (a word considered to be a phonetic adaptation of the Greek kalogeros).¹⁷ In medieval Greek, kalogeros always designated a monk, although it more literally meant "venerable person," as it does in modern Greek.¹⁸ It should be emphasized that in portraying the Greek monk, Pisanello wrote the word to designate him as chaloíre, that is, with a very long emphatic diagonal dash over the "i" (it is not entirely to be ruled out that this long accent dash also falls on the "o"). In most circumstances Pisanello skipped accents on letters in writing in his native tongue (and this one is certainly not a horizontal dash of the type that would signify a contraction of an "n" or "m," as has sometimes been claimed). The accented "i" probably reflects exactly the way Pisanello heard the foreign word pronounced, with emphasis on both the "o" and the "i," indicating a dipthong (unlike the case in a French pronunciation). If spoken quickly Pisanello's phonetic transcription seems surprisingly close in sound to kalógere, the vocative of the word kalógeros, which is the voice of address that Pisanello would have heard used by the Greeks in conversation.¹⁹

Immediately to the right of this figure is a fragmentary larger-scale sketch of the male figure with tall hat, long braid, and ribbons seen from the back. It is difficult to identify this figure or the one on the extreme right, seen from the front, who is distinguished by his forked beard and costume with very long sleeves and tall, conical hat. These two figures recall those on the lower left of the Paris recto as well as the upper left on the verso of that sheet. Their costumes are without doubt secular, to judge from closely comparable examples found in Byzantine paintings.²⁰ Fasanelli's supposition that the figures represent Greek prelates can therefore be ruled out. It is possible that they also represent the emperor, as Michael Vickers maintained; according to Vickers, the figure sketch on the extreme right of the Chicago recto represents the frontal view of the emperor's figure in irz garment, offering thus a counterpart to the rear-view sketch of the emperor seen in the center of the Paris recto. The visual evidence seems much too incomplete, however, for any such definitive conclusion; the emperor's enormous entourage (about seven hundred persons) included his brother the despot Demetrios, various ecclesiastical dignitaries, and numerous secular attendants.²¹ Fasanelli's overly specific reading of the evidence led him to suggest that the Paris and Chicago pages are to be understood as sketches recording a very precise event—the first dogmatic session of the council in Ferrara on October 8, 1438. For this first, most solemn, official meeting of the two churches, West and East, it does not seem likely that the emperor and his retinue would have worn garments and (hunting) accessories that so visibly alluded to the splendor of Islam. Moreover, none of the figures on either Paris or Chicago pages can be proved to represent Patriarch Joseph II of Constantinople himself, the most important Greek participant in the council beside the emperor.

CCB (See Contributors to the Catalogue.)