Two stratioti portraits

(Stratiote)

Male profile bust, 1477-1491, V& A, London. 48 x 47 cm.

One of my correspondents, Pavlos Plessas, sent me these remarkable portraits of stratioti. They, and four others, are in the Victoria & Albert Museum in London.  The V & A considers the subjects unknown, as is the artist or artists, but I think we can come very close to identifying the stratioti. First, some background.

Twelve more are in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.  These 18 are from a sequence of at least forty-four panels sold off in 1881/2 from the castle of San Martino Gusnago -- 32 k from Mantua if you are driving. Two panels are in the Cornell Fine Arts Museum in Florida, the rest are -- or were -- in private collections. The latest date for a whereabouts of one that I have been able to find is 1991.

The castle of San Martino Gusnago belonged to, and was built by the condottiero Francesco Secco d' Aragona  who was married to Caterina, daughter of Ludovico III Gonzaga of Mantua. Caterina was the great-granddaughter of Malatesta "dei Sonetti" Malatesta and the granddaughter of Paola Malatesta, sister of Cleofe Malatesta Palaiologina who has been the focus of so many entries here.  Secco and Caterina named their own daughter Paola.

Secco moved in the best circles.  His architect, Luca Fancelli, worked with Leon Battista Alberti.  He had the best employers -- the Duke of Milan, the Marchese of Mantua, the Doge of Venice -- and in 1477 was given the right to use the name and arms of the kingdom of Aragon.  He survived the battle of Fornovo in 1495 at the age of 72 but the next year he was killed by a shot from a crossbow.  

The V &  A dates their panels to 1477-1491 and consider them Secco's responsibility.  In 1491 Secco's properties were confiscated by Francesco II of Mantua because he was negotiating to work for Lorenzo di Medici.  Francesco gave the castle, or palazzo, to Eusebio Malatesta, his Jewish advisor.  The MMA dates their panels to 1500-1515 and considers them Malatesta's.  I don't think anyone has suggested that Secco commissioned some, and that after he was ousted Malatesta continued the series.  Several of the MMA panels have very suggestive Jewish elements.  The panels originally appear to have been in two facing groups on either side of a large beam that divided the ceiling of the hall where they were placed, eleven facing eleven in four rows.  The four central portraits looked straight ahead, while those on either side faced the center.

I identify these two portraits as stratioti, because of the distinctive hats, and the beards.  Greeks wore beards in that period, Italians generally were clean-shaven.  These are the only two beards in the eighteen portraits from the V & A, and the MMA. The stratiote above, in cloth-of-gold, seems to have the rank of a knight of San Marco.  Knights of San Marco were most often non-Venetian.  They were invested by the Doge, and given a gold robe. You can see one in the center of the bridge in Gentile Bellini's Miracle of the True Cross although it is difficult to make out any details of tailoring to compare with this portrait.

In September 1480, Krokodylos Kladas, Theodoros Palaiologos, and Micheli Rallis Drimis were invested as knights. Piero Busichi was also a knight, as were his brothers, Mexi and Dima. Mati Clemendi was a knight. That makes seven knights. There may have been other kapetanioi who were knights, but these are the names we have for the early 1480s.  Possibly more would have been created after the Ferrara War.  I want to be very cautious here, but I doubt that the list of Greek and Albanian knights of San Marco between 1477 and 1491 would be very long.  

The stratiote in the portrait below is wearing red -- we have a number of mentions of Venice giving red cloth to selected kapetanioi.  

( Stratiote)

Male profile bust, 1477-1491, V & A, London. 48 by 47 cm.

Here I am pushing -- and I want to emphasize the almost complete lack of information, or evidence -- but this picture reminds me powerfully of the Pisanello drawing of John VIII in Florence, most particularly the set of the eyes and the shape of the nose.  

John VIII. Pisanello, 1439. 25.8 X 19 cm.

Louvre, Departement des Arts Graphiques, 2478.

The stratiote appears to be a slight man, as we know John and Manuel were. Palaiologoi were kapetanioi for Venice in the period in question, and after. We have no solid proof of the relationships of any of them to John, Constantine, and Theodoros, but my colleague Ersie Burke and I think there is some evidence that allows us to say they were descended from Theodoros I Palaiologos.  Not enough evidence to be absolute, but some.  

I will take this a little further.  I have been struck by the particular striped design on the robe over the red fabric.  It reminds me of Ottoman design, so I asked an Ottoman art historian for his reaction.  He said, "It looks a bit like the wave pattern of the cintamani motif: tiger stripes and leopard dots (last is missing)." (Might the dots, or balls, have been too reminiscent of the Medici to be thought politic -- if it is supposed to indicate Ottoman fabric?)

Theodoros Palaiologos, knighted with Kladas, had -- like Kladas -- given allegiance to Mehmed II in 1460 and had received more lands.  When he came over to the Venetians in 1478 they noted that he had been highly regarded by the pasha of the Morea, and decided to send him and his company to fight in Friuli.  So there is an immediate Palaiologos-Ottoman-stratioti connection.  But not enough proof to identify this portrait.

There is another possible Palaiologos connection. Andreas Palaiologos, Thomas' son and John's nephew, seems to have been with Kladas in an effort to establish Skanderbeg's son in Albania in 1481, under the sponsorship of Ferdinand I of Naples who gave Franceso Secco the arms of Aragon in 1477. And there may have been another Palaiologos or two.

That is all that can be said here about identities -- there are teasingly close links: no solid evidence, no proofs.

If someone is looking for a dissertation topic in art history, I would like to offer these panels.  I will not have time in my life to follow up on the present locations, and images, of the other twenty-four panels, but I suspect that, seen collectively the forty-four would provide much more information about identities. (The only reasonably sure identification that has been made is that of Doge Marco Barbarigo in the MMA set.)  Archival work needs to be done to find the panels listed in private collections.

I hope readers will have more information to contribute.