ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the fresco with the depiction of the so-called Procession of the Magi painted in the chapel of Palazzo Medici Riccardi in Florence by Benozzo Gozzoli (after 1459). It analyses the fresco in relation to the 1438–39 ecumenical Council of Ferrara-Florence, the aftermath of the fall of Constantinople in 1453, the visual and iconographic agenda promoted by the Medici family, and the legacy that the Byzantine Empire had in the Italian peninsula. In particular, it reconsiders the well-studied and complex issue of the nature and identity of the main figures depicted in the fresco, the Magi. Before and after 1453, the polities of the Italian peninsula had long-standing and complex relations with the Byzantines and the Ottomans. In particular, in 1459, Pope Pius II, Enea Silvio Piccolomini, orchestrated a force to fight back the Ottomans through a crusade for which he asked for help from several Italian polities. One of these was the city of Florence with its most prominent family, the Medici. While being historically difficult to define how the Florentines publicly responded to the Pope’s request, this chapter discusses how the Medici, in the semi-private space of their family chapel, used the depiction of the Procession of the Magi to signal to Florentine and Italian elites their perception and admiration for the heirs of the Roman Empire, as well as their concerns with, and their hopes for, an East that was no longer Byzantine
