Ronchey, S. “Piero, Pisanello e i bizantini al concilio di Ferrara-Firenze.” Piero della Francesca e le corti italiane. Milan: Skira, 2007. 13-9.

This contribution analyses certain “Byzantine” works by Pisanello and Piero della Francesca, highlighting the iconographic indebtedness of the latter to the former. Pisanello was, in fact, the only Italian artist admitted into the presence of the basileus John VIII during the Council of Ferrara to draw his official portrait for a medal and perhaps, according to original intention, a painting. The artist executed an accurate set of sketches, preserved in part today, of not only the basileus in various poses, garments, and headdresses, but also the special horse he rode in Ferrara (recognizable by the cut of its nostrils), acquired from a Russian landowner present at the council. Furthermore, there also appears to be a young ecclesiastical dignitary in his entourage – perhaps Bessarion – pictured in the sketches. Twenty years later Piero derived the models of Byzantine figures, which recur in both the Arezzo Cycle and, especially, in the Flagellation of Urbino, presumably from the sketches (which we can date to August 1438 with the arrival of the Russian delegation to the council) and from the medal (which historical and iconographic analysis can attribute – at least its conception - almost certainly to the Ferrarese phase of the council).