52 - Antonio Averlino, known as Filarete (follower of) (Florence, 1400 - Rome, 1469)

Antonio Averlino, known as Filarete (follower of) (Florence, 1400 - Rome, 1469) Bust of John VIII Palaiologos, circa 1439–1445 burnished bronze, 47 x 42 x 25 cm Bronze bust depicting the Byzantine Emperor John VIII Palaiologos (Constantinople 1392 - Constantinople 1448), portrayed wearing the skiadion, the characteristic hat with an elongated brim, and a pointed beard. The bust presented here—given the complete correspondence in quality, technique, casting period, and material—must unequivocally be associated with the bust of the same subject held in the Vatican Museums. This latter bust is a portrait bust of Palaiologos from the Palazzo di Propaganda Fide and is believed by authoritative experts to be a 15th-century work by Antonio Averlino, known as Filarete. The bust in the Vatican Museums was published as an autograph work by Filarete by M. Lazzaroni and A. Muñoz in 1907; they also emphasized this attribution the following year (Lazzaroni and Muñoz 1908) by including the sculpture in the monograph dedicated to Filarete. Subsequently, a photograph of the work appeared in Federico Zeri's photographic collection, implicitly confirming the attribution advanced by Lazzaroni and Muñoz to Filarete (no. 71596). In 1986, J. Schuyler published a scholarly contribution attributing the work to Donatello, and questioning whether it was the first portrait the sculptor executed based on a living person. In 2004, the bust was exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, with the reference to Filarete or Donatello (“attributed to Antonio Filarete or Donatello”) (M. G. 2004). In 2008, the work was exhibited at the Fondazione Roma Museum, and once again, it was listed in the catalog with the attribution to Filarete (Zaccaria 2008). After meticulous observation of the style, alloy, casting technique, bronze thickness, additions to correct casting defects, surface polishing, and type of patination, we can confidently assert that the bust under examination here, cast in a single cast, comes from the same workshop, from the same model, and from the same chronological context as the one preserved in the Vatican Museums, whose critical history we have reconstructed above. Therefore, any evaluation involving the Vatican Museums piece must unequivocally also include the piece under study here. Considering the creation of multiple copies based on a single model does not seem inappropriate, given the universality of the figure depicted: John VIII Palaeologus, Emperor of Byzantium, who played such a significant role in the geopolitical dynamics of the time and in relations between East and West. Dating the busts to the years of the Council of Ferrara—opened in Ferrara in 1438 and then transferred to Florence the following year, and which saw the crucial participation of John VIII in the pursuit of union between the Greek and Latin churches—seems most convincing. It would therefore be a commission of similar sensitivity to that which involved Pisanello in creating a series of medals depicting John VIII, several copies of which—identical and all autographed—are held in the world's most important museums. In this sense, even the potential dynamic of serialization, whereby we might imagine the bust being sent to eminent figures, seats of potentates, or embassies, would acquire a certain historical and artistic significance. The presence of other variants and derivations, qualitatively weak and created in later centuries, should not be included in the considerations proposed here: our reflections are founded on the refined execution of the two busts (the one preserved in the Vatican and the one proposed here) and on their indisputable equivalence in style, era, and quality.