Ronchey, S. “La ‘mummia’ di Mistra. Bessarione, Cleopa Malatesta e un abito di damasco veneziano.” Thesaurismata 31 (2001): 75-89.

Bessarion’s funeral verses, dedicated to Cleopa Malatesta, Theodore II Palaeologus’ wife, who died prematurely of mysterious causes and was buried at Mystras, are the starting point for the analysis of an archaeological mystery which has been solved only in part.  After Maurice Barrès’ haphazard inspection of the site in 1900, the excavations carried out in the 1950s by Nikolaos Drandakis brought to light the half-mummified remains of an elegantly dressed, female cadaver. Paleo-anthropological analyses and, more importantly, analysis of the fragments of clothing and their fabric  (conducted in Geneva in 1999/2000 by an interdisciplinary team under the direction of Marielle Martiniani-Reber) established the composition, provenance, and date of the garment worn at the time of burial and confirmed the possibility — already tentatively posited by the author – of an identification of the so-called “Mystras mummy” with Cleopa or one of her ladies-in-waiting. In any case, the Western style of dress is evidence of the genealogical graft of the Italian aristocracy on the last Byzantine court.

 

EXTERNAL LINKS

http://morenoneri.blogspot.it/2011/04/cleopa-malatesta.html (blog with news and news clips on the discovery of the “Mistrà mummy” + article published in La Stampa)