Portrait of Emperor John

This portrait of the Byzantine Emperor John VIII Palaeologos is from a large cycle of frescoes depicting the Journey of the Magi to Bethlehem, painted between 1459 and 1461 on the walls of the Capella dei Magi in the Palazzo Medici-Riccardi in Florence. The artist, Benozzo Gozzoli, incorporated into his work many portraits of notable contemporary figures. Emperor John, who appears here in the guise of the Middle King, Balthazar, had visited Florence 20 years earlier to attend the Church Council there. Gozzoli could easily have seen him at that time, since his family had moved to Florence in 1427, where he was taken on as a pupil and assistant of the painter Fra Angelico.

John was the eldest brother of the Emperor Constantine XI, who succeeded him in 1449, to become the last Emperor in Constantinople before it was taken by the Ottomans in 1453.

I am writing a trilogy of historical novels about these Palaeologos brothers and the last troubled years of what became known as the Byzantine Empire. The first two books ‘The Mulberry Tree’ and ‘Constantine’ are now available on Amazon.