THE BRIDE OF TREBIZOND
CRISTELLE BASKINS
THE BRIDE OF TREBIZOND: TURKS AND TURKMENS ON
A FLORENTINE WEDDING CHEST, CIRCA 1460
This essay reconsiders the so-called Conquest of Trebi-
zond cassone, attributed to Apollonio di Giovanni and
Marco del Buono, now in the Metropolitan Museum of
Art, New York (fijig. 1).1 Such lavish and ornate wedding
chests were commissioned and decorated for patrician
brides in fijifteenth-century Tuscany.2 They stored the
linens, undergarments, and other personal items that
accompanied a bride when she took up residence with
her husband and his extended family. The painters
of the Trebizond cassone, who ran a successful busi-
ness in Florence, left behind a shop book that details
their activities from 1446 to 1463.3 The document
lists names of patrons and the prices they paid, but it
does not shed light on how or why particular subjects
for paintings were chosen. Apollonio di Giovanni and
Marco del Buono specialized in representations of an-
cient history and literature, including subjects drawn
from Homer, Virgil, and Ovid, as well as contemporary
works by Giovanni Boccaccio and Petrarch. While the
shop did treat conventional East–West confrontations
such as the Trojan War, Cimon and Xerxes, and Alexan-
der and Darius, the Trebizond chest is unique because it
represents a contemporary event set on the Renaissance
boundary between Europe and Asia.4
The front panel of the Trebizond cassone features, at
the left, a partial view of “GO[N]STANTINOPOLI,” or
Constantinople; opposite, we see Pera and the tower of
Galata. Another, larger, walled city on the horizon to the
right once bore an inscription identifying it as
“TREBIZOND[A],” the independent empire located on
the Black Sea that was ruled by the Byzantine Greek
Komnenoi family.5 Throughout the panel, soldiers wear-
ing gold and white turbans do battle with soldiers in
janissary caps, which vary in color—red, white, or
muq29-Baskins_CS5ME.indd 1
1
gold—some featuring aigrettes. The only fijigure in West-
ern dress is a man on horseback wearing a dark, bell-
shaped hat, who motions to the two men seated on the
triumphal chariot at the right side of the composition.
The short sides of the chest, or testate, feature a bird,
caltrops, and banderoles with a faded inscription
(fijig. 2). A stylized pomegranate pattern decorates the
interior surface of the lid, as well as the back panel of
the chest.
Scholars concur that this panel features one of the
rare representations of a contemporary event in fijif-
teenth-century domestic painting, but they disagree
about which battle it shows; neither the battle nor the
protagonists has ever been securely identifijied. The ear-
liest scholarly discussions of the cassone put it in the
context of Ottoman expansion: it was regarded as a rep-
resentation of either the fall of Constantinople in 1453
or the 1461 fall of Trebizond.6 In 1913, Werner Weisbach
argued that the picture showed Mehmed II (r. 1444–46,
1451–81) seated on the triumphal chariot with the
defeated Byzantine Greeks of Trebizond kneeling before
him. He associated the imagery with humanist interest
in Greece and with crusade propaganda. Weisbach iden-
tifijied the Greeks by the high conical caps, while he
thought that the Turks wore turbans. He carefully tran-
scribed the inscriptions identifying famous monuments
in Constantinople, but he did not mention any naming
individual fijigures. Paul Schubring followed suit in 1915,
assuming that the conqueror must be Mehmed II, who
defeated David Komnenos, the emperor of Trebizond
(r. 1460–61).7 In her 1974 monograph on Apollonio di
Giovanni, Ellen Callmann essentially accepted Weis-
bach’s identifijication of the scene as the fall of Trebizond
to the Ottomans but, given the complexity of the histor-
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CRISTELLE BASKINS

Fig. 1. Apollonio di Giovanni and Marco del Buono, Conquest of Trebizond (sic) cassone, ca. 1460. New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, John Stewart
Kennedy Fund, 1913. (Photo: courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art / Art Resource, New York)

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 THE BRIDE OF TREBIZOND
Fig. 2. Detail of the Trebizond cassone (fig. 1): testata. (Photo:
courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art / Art Resource,
New York)
ical situation and the fact that the city capitulated to
Mehmed’s forces without a struggle, she also wondered
whether “the panel represents a battle that never took
place.”8 As early as 1955, E. H. Gombrich questioned
whether the Apollonio di Giovanni and Marco del
Buono cassone depicted the fall of Trebizond, and con-
cluded that “it cannot have been the intention of the
painter simply to represent a Greek disaster.”9
In 1980, Sir John Pope-Hennessy and Keith Christian-
sen found a faint inscription to the right of the upper-
most fijigure seated on the triumphal chariot at the right
that reads “TAN[B]URLANA” (fijig. 3).10 With this new
information they launched a novel interpretation, sug-
gesting that the panel shows the Turco-Mongolian
leader Tamerlane (Timur) after his defeat of the Otto-
man ruler Bayezid I (r. 1389–1402) at the Battle of Ankara
in 1402.11 Indeed, Timur’s victory over Bayezid generated
considerable interest among fijifteenth-century human-
muq29-Baskins_CS5ME.indd 3
3
Fig. 3. Detail of the Trebizond cassone (fig. 1): the inscription
TAN[B]URLANA. (Photo: courtesy of the Metropolitan
Museum of Art / Art Resource, New York)
ists and other proponents of crusade.12 The inclusion of
Timur in Pisanello’s fresco of S. George and the Princess
at Sant’Anastasia in Verona, for example, has been
linked to the Council of Ferrara/Florence and to cru-
sade propaganda.13 Around 1430, the Florentine artist
Masolino included Timur in his now lost fresco cycle for
the Orsini Palace in Rome; likewise, in his description
of the imaginary Sforzinda palace, circa 1465, the archi-
tect Filarete envisioned a fresco cycle of “Famous Men”
that culminated with the fijigure of Timur.14
Timur’s reputation as a powerful opponent of the
Ottomans appealed to the popular imagination in Chris-
tian Europe. Nevertheless, the incongruous conflation
on the cassone panel of Ankara, the site of Timur’s 1402
victory, and Trebizond remains unresolved. Why would
Florentine viewers looking at this painting recall a bat-
tle that had taken place more than fijifty years earlier,
and in another location? An additional element com-
plicates the identifijication of the conqueror as Timur:
there is a second, nearly identical fijigure seated on the
triumphal chariot (fijig. 4). Patricia Lurati has suggested
that this man could be Timur’s captive prisoner, Bayezid
I. But he is shown comfortably seated, without chains
or restraints, and he wears the same kind of turban as
Timur.15 Nor does this unfettered, sumptuously dressed
companion resemble the bound captives or clowns who
often appear in cassone paintings sitting below a con-
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 4 CRISTELLE BASKINS
Fig. 4. Detail of the Trebizond cassone (fig. 1): triumphal chariot. (Photo: courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art / Art
Resource, New York)
queror riding in a triumphal chariot. Any successful
interpretation of the Trebizond panel has to provide a
convincing identity for this subsidiary fijigure.
Such problems indicate the need for a fresh inter-
pretation. To begin with, scholars have been too hasty
to link the painting with the Ottoman takeover of the
last remnant of the Byzantine empire. As Paribeni
argues, if this were a depiction of the fall of 1461, “we
would expect a greater involvement of Trebizond in the
military operations, with images, for example, of the
defenders spread out along the ramparts and the attack-
ers using various means to breach the walls of the
besieged city….”16 Since Trebizond is shown intact, lack-
ing signs of occupation such as soldiers, flags, or ban-
ners, the panel must depict a moment before the
Ottoman conquest. This essay will argue that the Trebi-
zond cassone represents a conflict not between Byzan-
muq29-Baskins_CS5ME.indd 4
tine Greeks and Turks but rather between Turks (shown
with their characteristic janissary caps) and their rivals
the Turkmens (shown wearing turbans).17 The political
machinations and shifting alliances in Europe and the
Black Sea region in the late 1450s provide the basis for
this interpretation of the wedding chest created by
Apollonio di Giovanni and Marco del Buono.
TREBIZOND
The cassone painters and their patron could have ob-
tained various kinds of information about Trebizond
from traveler’s accounts, maps, and commercial regula-
tions, as well as from humanist texts. The patron of the
Trebizond cassone may have had access, for example,
to the narrative of Ruy González de Clavijo, a Spanish
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 THE BRIDE OF TREBIZOND 5

traveler who described the city of Trebizond around

1403 as follows:
On the highest part of the rocks is a very strong castle.
On this side the city is very strong, but on the other side
it is on open ground; but it has a good wall…the most
beautiful part is a street near the sea, which is in one of
these suburbs, where they sell all the things required in
the city. On the shore there are two castles with strong
walls and towers, one belonging to the Venetians and
the other to the Genoese [fig. 5].18

The Encomium that Cardinal Bessarion (d. 1472) wrote

to the city of Trebizond, written before 1439, is more
detailed than Clavijo’s terse description:
The dwelling of the emperors is set up in the present
acropolis and is itself no less than an acropolis, surpass-
ing as it does all other buildings by the strength of its
walls and the variety, size and beauty of its construction.
Its west wall is common to the acropolis and the palace,
and serves the same purpose to both up to a height of two
storeys; from there upward, it extends for the sake of the
palace alone and towers above the wall of the acropolis
by almost the same measure that the latter rises above
the ground. The walls facing in other directions, being
adequate in point of height, thickness and other respects,
extend all the way down and, while they take away more
than half of the acropolis, they add this area to the pal-
ace, and are themselves sufficient to resist the oncoming
enemy and to guard safely those that may be inside. They
afford entrance by means of two gates and one postern, Fig. 5. Map of “The Citadel of Medieval Trabizon.” (Photo:
and for the rest are securely constructed so as to exclude courtesy of Armenica.org)
and ward off attackers.19

The layout depicted on the Trebizond cassone agrees in
general with Bessarion’s description of the site and the
topography of the city (fijig. 6). We can see the fortifijica-
tions on the acropolis that offfered excellent defense to
the Trapezuntines, as well as the many trading ships
offfshore that brought the city its wealth. The view pre-
sented on the chest includes the twin-towered southern
approach to the citadel, as well as three gates. Yet most
art historians dismiss this depiction of Trebizond as a
generic city view based on other works by Apollonio di
Giovanni and Marco del Buono. The cassone painters
did employ some stock motifs, such as buildings based
on the Pantheon in Rome and the Florentine Baptis-
tery, but they nevertheless included crenellated walls,
bastions, and polygonal buildings that closely resemble
some of the extant remains of Byzantine Trebizond.20
Similar features may be found in a slightly later repre-
sentation of Trebizond from a Greek lectionary commis-
sioned by the Trapezuntine bishop Alexius Celadenus
(d. 1517); the city view appears in the lower right regis-
ter of the title page, opposite “New Rome,” or Constan-
tinople, on the left (fijig. 7).21
Although they doubt the accuracy of the view of
Trebizond, Callmann, Pope-Hennessy, Christiansen,
and Paribeni each note the faithful representation of
Constantinople; they link this city view to a map by the
Florentine Cristoforo Buondelmonti (fijigs. 8 and 9).22
Only Lurati objects that the Buondelmonti maps pres-
ent aerial views while the cities depicted on the cassone
panel are seen from only slightly above or at ground

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 6 CRISTELLE BASKINS
Fig. 6. Detail of the Trebizond cassone (fig. 1): view of Trebizond. (Photo: courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art / Art
Resource, New York)
Fig. 7. Anonymous, title page of the Greek Lectionary, ca.
1511–12. Florence, Biblioteca Laurenziana, Medici Palatina
244, fol. IV: detail showing Constantinople and Trebizond.
(Photo: courtesy of the Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Cul-
turali, Florence)
level.23 Fourteenth-century Portolan maps have also
provided information regarding the topography and
place names that appear on the Trebizond panel.24 Pari-
beni suggests that the CHASTELO NUOVO, or new cas-
tle, that appears in the left background of the cassone
relates to a contemporary drawing of the fortress
recently built by Mehmed, known as Rumeli Hisar (fijigs.
10 and 11).25 In both images, the fortress appears as a
three-sided structure with cannons arrayed along the
perimeter walls.
Maps and drawings were not the only available
sources of information about Trebizond. A Florentine
muq29-Baskins_CS5ME.indd 6
patron might well have been interested in the commer-
cial relations that Trebizond had established in the four-
teenth century with the rival trading cities of Genoa and
Venice.26 The Genoese were allowed to settle in the sub-
urb of Daphnous to the east of Trebizond, and, as Clavijo
noted, from 1349 on they occupied the fortress of Leon-
tokastron, which overlooked the harbor. The Venetians
were later granted similar privileges, including “a site
for a church, dwellings, and warehouses.”27 The Euro-
pean merchants operating in Trebizond could be com-
petitive and even adversarial. The Genoese were
particularly demanding commercial partners, and spite-
ful when crossed; they occasionally interfered in local
conflicts.28 From the 1420s through the 1450s they were
at odds with the Komnenian emperors over not only
tarifffs but also a huge sum of money that Emperor John
IV (r. 1429–60) owed to the Genoese Bank of St. George
at Cafffa in the Crimea.29 John, in turn, suspected the
Genoese of conspiring with Mehmed II.
By 1460, John’s successor, David Komnenos, decided
to approach the Florentines, newcomers to the Black
Sea port, with an attractive set of trade concessions.
Trebizond would provide a warehouse with residential
quarters and a chapel for the consul, who was to mon-
itor Florentine transactions. The port duty was set at
only 2% and the Florentines were granted an exemp-
tion from the exit tax; no charges were to be levied
against unsold merchandise. The Florentines were also
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 THE BRIDE OF TREBIZOND 7

free to keep male and female slaves for their own use.
The emperor guaranteed safe conduct to all Florentine
merchants and ships, and promised to give six months’
notice for any changes in his policies.30 The terms of the
agreement were presented on December 14th and 15th
of that year by “Michele degli Alighieri,” a Florentine
merchant residing in Trebizond who acted as David
Komnenos’s ambassador.31 Representatives of the Com-
mune of Florence, including Piero de’Medici, gathered
at Santa Croce to hear the details and to draft an enthu-
siastic response.32 When Trebizond fell the following
year, the contract became void; however, Florence con-
tinued to send ships to Trebizond under agreements
with the Ottomans.
The Florentines could also draw on fijirsthand ac- Fig. 8. Detail of the Trebizond cassone (fig. 1): view of Con-
counts of Trebizond’s history from the Greek scholars stantinople. (Photo: courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum
who had emigrated to Italy, such as Manuel Chrysolo- of Art / Art Resource, New York)
ras (d. 1415), George of Trebizond (d. 1486), Cardinal
Bessarion, and John Argyropulos (d. 1486). Among the
key facts about the city would have been Trebizond’s
foundation in 756 B.C. and its dramatic expansion after
the sack of Constantinople by the Crusaders in 1204,
when the Byzantine emperor sought refuge on the lit-
toral of the Black Sea. Even after the reestablishment of
Constantinople in 1261, the Komnenoi of Trebizond
experienced a stormy relationship with the rival Byzan-
tine Palaiologan dynasty on the Bosphorus, since each
claimed the title of “Emperor and Autocrat of the
Romans.”33 Trapezuntine politics were infamous for
their factionalism, corruption, and palace coups.
Besides jockeying for position with Constantinople
within the Byzantine hierarchy, Trebizond also had to
deal with other threats to its autonomy. In the early thir-
teenth century, the Seljuks of Rum (Anatolia) subju-
gated Trebizond, and the Komnenian emperors were
obliged to pay an annual tribute to their new masters.
After the conquest of Baghdad in 1258, Trebizond briefly
became a vassal of the Mongols. Moreover, the city peri-
odically faced attacks by its Christian neighbors as well
as by the Islamic Turkmen dynasties.

TURKMENS Fig. 9. Map of Constantinople, after Cristoforo Buondel-

monti, Liber Insularum Archipelagi, ca. 1465. Vatican, Biblio-
The Turkmens, a group of peoples of East Turkic stock, teca Apostolica Vaticana, Cod. Urb. Lat. 459, fol. 34. (Photo:
were distantly related to the Ottoman Turks but po- courtesy of the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana)

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 8 CRISTELLE BASKINS
Fig. 10. Detail of the Trebizond cassone (fig. 1): Rumeli Hisar.
(Photo: courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art / Art
Resource, New York)
litically independent; they saw themselves as indirect
successors to the Timurids. The Turkmens comprised
fijifty clans, divided into two federations, the Black Sheep
(Karakuyunlu) and the White Sheep (Akkuyunlu). The
power base of the White Sheep was initially centered
in Mesopotamia, with the court located at Diyarbakır;
in the 1460s, the capital moved to the more prestigious
city of Tabriz. The territory controlled by the White
Sheep eventually included portions of present-day
Anatolia, Armenia, Iraq, and Iran. Observing that the
Turkmen prince Uzun Hasan (d. 1478) had married
the Trapezuntine princess Theodora Komnena in 1458,
Callman hypothesized a link between this wedding and
the Trebizond cassone. Paribeni has recently returned to
this fruitful suggestion.34 Callmann thought that Uzun
Hasan (who appears in fijifteenth-century Italian sources
as, alternately, Ussan Cassan, Assambech, Assambei,
Zoncassano, and the “Re di Persia”) was an “important
ally” of Mehmed II, who nonetheless lost his estates
as the sultan consolidated his territory along the coast
of the Black Sea. She associated the representation of
the fall of Trebizond not with crusade propaganda,
as Weisbach had initially suggested, but rather with
a Turcophile enthusiasm. Western sympathy with the
Ottoman Turks, she pointed out, was “…abetted by the
humanists who called the Turks Teucri (Trojans) and
saw in their sack of the Greek capital just retribution for
the sack of Troy by the Greeks…the Fall of Trebizond is
brought into the orbit of Apollonio [di Giovanni]’s oc-
muq29-Baskins_CS5ME.indd 8
cupation with ancient history, and the Italians’ desire to
celebrate their descent from Aeneas and the Trojans.”35
In the 1460s, for example, Paola Strozzi, of the Ferra-
rese branch of the Florentine family, married Zarabinus
Turchus. The humanist Ludovico Carbone delivered an
epithalamium in which he praised the groom by con-
necting his family name to the homonymous Ottoman
Turks, and thence to the noble Trojans, their purported
ancestors.36 But humanist historiography combined
seamlessly with mercantile self-interest. Some Floren-
tines may have imaginatively identifijied Turks with Tro-
jans, but they also paid lip service to the idea of crusade,
even while they hoped to expand their trade in the Black
Sea region.
Callmann was right to look for connections to mar-
riage, the single most appropriate theme for a fijifteenth-
century Florentine wedding chest.37 She was also right
to link the Trebizond cassone with Uzun Hasan, though
in fact the connections are deeper and even more
closely tied to historical events of the 1450s than either
she or Paribeni have realized. Turks and Turkmens,
though easily lumped together from a historical and
geographical distance, were actually in fijierce competi-
tion with one another over territorial dominion. Rather
than being an ally of Mehmed II, the “Grand Turk,” Uzun
Hasan, called the “Little Turk,” was a lifelong rival who
repeatedly attempted to ally with Western powers in
order to block Ottoman expansion in Anatolia. Rather
than recording a climactic defeat as all previous schol-
ars have supposed, the Trebizond cassone instead
depicted auspicious events in which a powerful son-in-
law, Uzun Hasan, protected the interests of his wife’s
family, the Komnenoi.
SETTING THE SCENE
In 1456, two years before the wedding of Theodora
Komnena and Uzun Hasan, an outbreak of plague ren-
dered Trebizond weak and vulnerable to attack. Threats
emerged from the Turkmens, the Safavid Shaykh Junayd
(d. 1460), and, most seriously, from the Ottoman gov-
ernor of nearby Amasya.38 As the governor’s troops
approached the suburbs of the plague-stricken city,
Junayd withdrew and took refuge with Uzun Hasan.
John IV Komnenos, frightened by the show of Ottoman
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 THE BRIDE OF TREBIZOND 9

strength, agreed to a tribute of 3,000 gold pieces, to

be paid annually by the emperor of Trebizond to the
sultan in Istanbul. John apparently hoped that the trib-
ute would postpone further incursions into his territory.
But as he watched Trapezuntine autonomy begin to
erode, he also began to negotiate with Uzun Hasan for
military protection. The marriage of the Turkmen leader
to his daughter, Theodora, was intended to cement the
alliance.
The Komnenoi and the Turkmens enjoyed limited
coexistence in this period; the nomadic tribes had
authority over the grazing lands in the countryside,
while the Greeks controlled the urban center and com-
merce. Theodora’s marriage to Uzun Hasan of the White
Sheep was not exceptional. In fact, the Komnenoi had
a longstanding policy of marrying their daughters to
Turkmen husbands; at least eight such marriages were
celebrated during the fourteenth and fijifteenth centu-
ries.39 These marriages resulted in mutual benefijits: the
Turkmens gained some control over their northwestern
border and access to sea trade, while the ruling family
of Trebizond was increasingly able to depend on Turk-
men allies for defense against the Ottomans.
For his part, Uzun Hasan was faced with power strug-
gles and factions within the White Sheep clans. To solid-
ify his position, he fijirst forged an alliance with Shaykh
Junayd through a marriage with his own sister, Khad-
ija.40 Then, in 1457, he defeated his elder brother Jahan-
gir, the former leader of the White Sheep, established Fig. 11. Venetian?, Drawing of Rumeli Hisar, ca. 1453. Milan,
himself in Diyarbakır, in northern Mesopotamia, and Biblioteca Trivulziana, Codex 641. (Photo: courtesy of the
Archivio Storico Civico-Biblioteca Trivulziana, Milan)
became the dominant leader of the federation. In 1458,
once the White Sheep had been unifijied and Uzun
Hasan’s ascendancy was assured, the emperor of Trebi-
zond presided over the Turkmen leader’s marriage to tian and several of his relatives had likewise married
his daughter Theodora.41 At that time, Uzun Hasan Christian brides.42 A later fijifteenth-century traveler,
agreed to join an anti-Ottoman coalition with the Kom- Zorzi of Flanders, wrote that Theodora gave Uzun
nenoi and other Anatolian and Caucasian powers, Hasan a chain with a crucifijix to wear for protection in
including Georgia, Mingrelia, Sinop, and Karaman, battle.43 Zorzi went on to say that out of love for his wife,
forming the so-called Asiatic League. or perhaps by divine grace, Uzun Hasan took the cruci-
The bridal procession to Diyarbakır included a party fijix and enjoyed great prosperity. By 1470, as Zorzi’s
of noble ladies as well as priests. Theodora joined Uzun account attests, the rumor that Uzun Hasan had secretly
Hasan’s three Muslim wives, already in residence. She converted to the Christian faith was circulating in
was allowed to remain a Christian and to maintain a Europe. A Venetian ballad, dating to 1477, claims that
chapel and a chaplain. This concession to Theodora’s Uzun Hasan became a Christian like his allies who
faith was perhaps not surprising given that Uzun fought the Grand Turk and that his golden flags featured
Hasan’s own mother, was rumored to have been a Chris- images of the Virgin Mary.44

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 10 CRISTELLE BASKINS
Fig. 12. Detail of the Trebizond cassone (fig. 1): Turkmens with Ottoman prisoners. (Photo: courtesy of the Metropolitan
Museum of Art / Art Resource, New York)
After his marriage to Theodora Komnena, Uzun
Hasan considered Trebizond a vassal state of the White
Sheep, and he felt confijident enough to assert his new
position to the Ottomans. In 1459, Uzun Hasan sent an
embassy to Mehmed II demanding that the sultan waive
the annual Trapezuntine tribute payment. In addition,
Uzun Hasan asked Mehmed to resume paying him a
tribute of “1,000 horse blankets, and as many turban
cloths and carpets,” as Mehmed’s grandfather had cus-
tomarily sent to the White Sheep.45 Provoking the Otto-
man sultan even further, Uzun Hasan claimed that the
territory of Cappadocia was part of the dowry he had
received from his marriage to the princess of Trebizond.
Mehmed II was not about to relinquish control over this
region; his negative response to Uzun Hasan’s demands
gave the Turkmen leader an excuse to attack the for-
tress of Melet and the “principality of Qoylu Hisar on
the river Kelkit which commanded the approaches from
central to eastern Anatolia,” along the Ottoman bor-
der.46 This old Byzantine mountain castle turned Turk-
men garrison was located to the southwest of Trebizond,
between Sivas to the west and Erzerum to the east. An
early version of the name, “Koyunlu Hisar,” or Sheep for-
tress, attests to the association of the White Sheep with
this site.47
The White Sheep attack on Koylu Hisar in the
autumn of 1459 was initially successful, but Mehmed’s
troops later regrouped. In 1460, Uzun Hasan personally
led the charge to retake the border fortress. According
muq29-Baskins_CS5ME.indd 10
to John E. Woods, he “scattered the besiegers and pur-
sued them as far west as their base in Sivas. The Akku-
yunlu sources deemed this riposte a great success,
resulting in the capture of many Ottoman prisoners and
much booty.”48 Although in hindsight we might dismiss
the struggle over Koylu Hisar as a mere border skirmish,
it was one of the most signifijicant engagements between
Turkmen and Ottoman forces from the time of Uzun
Hasan’s marriage in 1458 until the fall of Trebizond in
1461.49 The immediate result was a truce. For the time
being, Mehmed II acceded to Uzun Hasan’s claims to
the vassalage of Trebizond, although he was already
planning a siege for the following year.
The Turkmen victories of 1459–60 at Melet and Koylu
Hisar help us to read the imagery of the Trebizond cas-
sone (fijig. 1). The battle occurs not in Trebizond itself
but to the south and west of the city, in the general
direction of the disputed principality on the Ottoman
border. In the foreground, Ottoman troops enter the
scene from the west, while the Turkmens are shown
arriving from the east. Fallen soldiers from both armies
appear in the mid-foreground of the composition. But
at the right, turban-wearing Turkmens are shown sub-
duing Ottoman Turks wearing janissary caps. The White
Sheep soldiers bind the arms of their adversaries and
force them to kneel before the approaching triumphal
chariot (fijig. 12). The adjacent fijigure on horseback, who
gestures towards the defeated Ottoman soldiers, should
be identifijied as David Komnenos, emperor of Trebi-
22-5-2012 13:51:34
 THE BRIDE OF TREBIZOND 11

zond; his outstretched right arm points in the same

direction as the seated triumphator’s baton (fijig. 4).50
The emperor seems to serve the function described by
Leon Battista Alberti in his De pictura (1435):
I like there to be someone in the ‘historia’ who tells the
spectators what is going on, and either beckons them
with his hand to look, or with ferocious expression and
forbidding glance challenges them not to come near, as
if he wished their business to be secret, or points to some
danger or some remarkable secret, or by his gestures
invites you to laugh or to weep with them.51

The man seated on the lower tier of the triumphal char-

iot represents the Turkmen leader Uzun Hasan, whose
success against the Ottomans up to that point augured
the future victories of the Asiatic League (fijig. 4).52 His
counterpart on the chariot is shown in a higher position,
literally and fijiguratively superior; this is Timur, appear-
ing anachronistically as a reminder of the defeat of the
Ottomans in 1402. The juxtaposition of the two military
leaders on the chariot and their similarity in dress and
gesture provide a visual corollary to Uzun Hasan’s claim
of being the legitimate successor of the Timurids.53 At
the Council of Mantua in 1459, for example, the human-
ist Francesco Filelfo delivered an oration in which he
“claimed that Christ himself had sent Timur, at the head
of a mighty army from the East, to rescue the Byzantine
Greeks.”54 On that same occasion, Cardinal Bessarion
appealed to European leaders to undertake a crusade
and save the Byzantine Greeks from Ottoman aggres-
sion.55 A Turkmen ambassador to Venice in 1464 pur- Fig. 13. Anonymous, Sultan Mehmed II’s Defeat of the Turk-
portedly emphasized the link between Uzun Hasan’s mens at Bashkent. Seyyid Lokman, Hünernāme, ca.1587–
88. Istanbul, Topkapı Palace Museum Library, Topkapı Saray
ancestry and his political mission:
Hazine 1523–1524, fol. 170b. (Photo: courtesy of the Topkapı
The ambassador representing Uzun Hasan recalled how Palace Museum Library)
Tamberlan (whom he called the grandfather of his lord)
once captured Baisit, father of that Mehmed who reigns
today…and he said that he reminded them of Tamber- and Uzun Hasan, familiar from chronicles and diplo-
lan’s victory in order to inform the Signoria of his lord’s matic relations, into the Florentine visual idiom.
hostility to the Turk….56 Uzun Hasan’s earliest serious challenge to Mehmed
Based on the reports that the Genoese merchant Jacopo II, at Koylu Hisar in 1459–1460, was a celebrated event,
de Promontorio de Campis wrote around 1475, Paribeni making its way into European sources as well as into the
argues that “Uzun Hasan constructed his own image chronicles of the White Sheep. In a letter to the Duke of
according to the myth of the legendary Mongol leader; Burgundy dated April 22, 1460, the emperor of Trebi-
both he and his descendants shared the epithet, ‘new zond explained,
Tamerlane’….”57 The Trebizond panel should be under- I have given [Theodora] as wife to Assambech [i.e.
stood, then, as introducing the fused histories of Timur Hasan Beg]…I have done this to secure him and make

muq29-Baskins_CS5ME.indd 11 22-5-2012 13:51:34

 12 CRISTELLE BASKINS
him faithful to us in the [Asiatic] league which we made
together; and so that he should persevere in fighting
against the Turk, who holds Constantinople. And now
the alliance has begun operations and has captured in
battle many of the Turk’s lands and fortresses which
lay on his borders, and now he has retired into his own
country.58
The emperor goes on to enumerate the troops and ships
at the disposal of the alliance: Uzun Hasan is said to
have 50,000 men ready to march. This letter was most
likely ghostwritten by Michele Alighieri, the same mer-
chant who presented the details of the Trebizond trade
contract to the Florentine Signoria in December 1460,
as discussed earlier:59 the letter refers to him in inflated
terms, as “Michael de Algeory, baron and ambassador.”
But despite such exaggerations of rank, the reference in
the letter to the Ottoman loss of land and fortresses can
only refer to the recent struggle over Melet and Koylu
Hisar. And Alighieri would have had ample opportunity
to spread information about the Turkmen victories and
Trebizond’s fraught situation as he traveled, from 1460
to 1462, between Burgundy, Florence, Rome, Milan, and
Bologna as part of an embassy representing the Asiatic
League.60
PATRONAGE
A Florentine patron of the Trebizond cassone could
easily have seen in Uzun Hasan a bona fijide champion
of Christianity, a heroic defender of the last bastion of
the Byzantine empire, a valiant general, and a loyal son-
in-law. Such an idealized image would have appealed
to those Florentine patrician merchants who by 1460
hoped that the Asiatic League might help curb Ottoman
expansion while nevertheless protecting trade in the
Levant. The dual objectives of faith and profijit led to a
certain ambivalence: on the one hand, the Florentines
shared a general anxiety that conflict with the Otto-
mans would eventually move into Europe, yet the city’s
bankers were reluctant to underwrite the expense of
another papal crusade. Throughout their pontifijicates,
Popes Calixtus III (r. 1455–58) and Pius II (r. 1458–64)
tirelessly promoted crusade against the Ottomans. One
of their peripheral strategies involved keeping Mehmed
II’s supposed stepbrother, Celepino—also known as Il
muq29-Baskins_CS5ME.indd 12
Turchetto, Bajezid Osman, and Calixtus Ottomanus—as
a pampered hostage in Ancona.61 By encouraging Cel-
epino’s imperial aspirations, the popes hoped to play
him offf against the sultan. In return for papal protection,
Celepino dutifully converted to Christianity in 1456. In
1459, Pius II took this crusade “mascot” to the Council
of Mantua, where he must have made an impression on
all the delegates, including Bessarion, Filelfo, and those
from Florence. Yet Florentine public opinion remained
deeply divided about contributing funds and participat-
ing in the crusade efffort. Between 1457 and 1460, prior
to the fall of Trebizond, Florentine support for a papal
crusade was at its lowest point.62
Given this context, it seems likely that the Trebizond
wedding chest was made for a merchant involved in
international trade who hoped to turn a profijit on Flo-
rentine state galleys bound for the Black Sea. Two such
galleys left in August of 1459 and returned in midsum-
mer the following year; one ship ventured beyond Con-
stantinople, making the fijirst offfijicial Florentine visit to
Trebizond. Five hundred Florentines, including two
hundred patricians, were on board, and the value of the
goods carried was estimated at one hundred thousand
florins.63 The presence of these galleys in Ottoman
waters probably accounts for Florentine reluctance to
join the crusade proposed by Pope Pius II at the Coun-
cil of Mantua.64 The potential for profijit in the Black Sea
region as well as the hope of gaining political advan-
tages over Venice efffectively stalled Florentine partici-
pation in the pope’s crusade plans.
Any of the Florentine patricians who made the voy-
age to Trebizond might have heard of the exploits of
Uzun Hasan and the Turkmen victories at Melet and
Koylu Hisar. And the men who sailed in 1459 returned
to Florence well in advance of the arrival of the above-
mentioned embassy of the Asiatic League, which
brought with it Michele Alighieri, his letter from David
Komnenos to the Duke of Burgundy, and the formal
trade agreement from the emperor of Trebizond. Given
the proximity of these events, we can safely assume the
presence of many interested and well-informed poten-
tial patrons for the Trebizond cassone in the years 1459–
60. It is harder to speculate about the intended female
audience for the wedding chest, but perhaps the con-
temporary Florentine bride who received it could imag-
ine herself, like Theodora Komnena, as the link between
22-5-2012 13:51:36
 THE BRIDE OF TREBIZOND
powerful men whose deeds make history. Some brides,
like those from the Acciaioli family—the Dukes of Ath-
ens until 1458—might have identifijied even more closely
with the subject matter, as it echoed their own imme-
diate histories. Stories involving female intermediaries
between rival or enemy men often appear on Floren-
tine wedding chests. In cassone paintings featuring Hip-
polyta, Camilla, Dido, the Sabine women, Lucretia, or
Virginia, for example, the women bring about a resolu-
tion to conflicts between men either by their marriages
or by their own stoic deaths.65 The private, domestic life
of brides might, by association with such famous fijigures
from myth and history, be shown to have an impact on
public, political events and institutions.
Despite the earliest known provenance of the Trebi-
zond chest from the Palazzo Strozzi in Florence, we can-
not be certain that the original commission came from
a member of that family. The Strozzi represent just one
possibility among the many wealthy patricians who
might have commissioned this lavishly decorated cas-
sone from the workshop of Apollonio di Giovanni and
Marco del Buono. Even the birds that appear on the tes-
tate, usually said to be Strozzi devices, might be con-
strued as falcons, hawks, or even eagles, birds prominent
in the heraldry of not only the Guelph party in Florence
and the Komnenoi of Trebizond, but also the Genoese
merchants resident in the Black Sea region (fijig. 2).66 If
the birds on the Trebizond cassone do refer to the Stro-
zzi family, they present a much more simplifijied version
of the falcon than the family customarily used.
At least three diffferent possible Strozzi patrons can
be identifijied in the bottega book from the shop of Apol-
lonio di Giovanni and Marco del Buono. Callmann sug-
gested that the chest was commissioned in 1462 for the
marriage of Caterina Strozzi and Jacopo degli Spini in
1465.67 Paribeni argues that Caterina’s uncle, Vanni,
rather than her father, Benedetto, must have commis-
sioned the chest: Vanni Strozzi contributed to the fijinan-
cial backing for a galley to the Black Sea and Trebizond
in 1462 and again in 1468.68 More recently, Lurati has
suggested that Filippo Strozzi, exiled in Naples and
familiar with international trade and Black Sea politics,
commissioned the chest for his marriage in 1466 to
Fiammetta degli Adimari.69 Lurati argues that the tri-
umph of Timur on the Trebizond chest echoes Filippo’s
muq29-Baskins_CS5ME.indd 13
13
triumphant return to Florence from his Neapolitan
exile. To date, no new documentary evidence has come
to light that would confijirm any of these recent attempts
to identify the patron of the Trebizond wedding chest.
The scene depicted on the Trebizond cassone should
no longer be confused with the Ottoman takeover of the
city in 1461. Its subject matter must predate this event,
which would have rendered meaningless the auspicious
aspects of Uzun Hasan’s story. Changes in Florentine
foreign policy make it very unlikely that the wedding
chest was commissioned much after 1460, when Flor-
ence shifted its policy toward Mehmed II and Venice
fell out of favor with the sultan.70 Callmann reminds us,
“in fact, in 1461 the Venetians were ousted from their
houses in Constantinople and these were given to the
Florentines.”71 By 1463, the conflict between Venice and
the Ottomans had blossomed into a full-fledged war.
From 1464 until his death in 1478, Uzun Hasan embraced
Venice rather than Florence as his major European
ally.72 He saw the Venetian Republic as the best source
of the weapons he needed to confront the sultan’s
armies.73 But even Uzun Hasan’s alliance with the
Serenissima, the pope, and Naples did not prevent the
Ottomans from attaining a decisive victory over the
Turkmens at Bashkent in August 1473. The climactic
battle was commemorated in an anonymous sixteenth-
century Ottoman miniature painting showing Turkmen
captives along with beheaded victims in the foreground,
including Uzun Hasan’s own son, Zeynal (fijig. 13).74
Some months before the defeat at Bashkent, Uzun
Hasan appeared as a heroic fijigure in the Italian popu-
lar imagination. He was featured in a Carnival play per-
formed at the residence of Cardinal Riario in Rome in
March of 1473.75 The festivities included a lavish ban-
quet, a battle that ended with the defeat of the Turks
and their conversion to Christianity, and a duel fought
between the captain of the “Macedonians” (understood
as Uzun Hasan) and that of the Turks. The play con-
cluded with Mehmed II being taken captive and con-
fijined in the Cardinal’s palace. Such theater spectacle
allowed for a triumphantly happy ending that was not
attainable on the battlefijield. And as we have already
seen, Uzun Hasan’s legendary deeds in battle were still
being celebrated in a Venetian ballad circa 1477.76 But
in contrast to the ongoing interest in Uzun Hasan on
22-5-2012 13:51:36
 14 CRISTELLE BASKINS
the part of the Romans or the Venetians, the Florentines
gave a chilly reception to an embassy that the Turkmen
leader sent to them in 1475.77
The particular confluence of circumstances in the
late 1450s to 1460 that led to the production of the Trebi-
zond cassone by Apollonio di Giovanni and Marco del
Giovanni was so short-lived and volatile that the sub-
ject never again found its way into Florentine painting.
Despite the fall of Constantinople, the Signoria had sent
an offfijicial letter to Mehmed II in 1455 thanking him for
his good treatment of Florentine merchants in Ottoman
territory and asking for free access to all cities within
his dominion.78 By 1459, Florence had strengthened the
administration of the Consoli del Mare and sent a state
galley to the Black Sea. It was also on the verge of receiv-
ing its fijirst formal trade contract from the Byzantine
emperor of Trebizond. The Trebizond cassone should
be understood in relation to this pivotal moment in Flo-
rentine foreign policy and Ottoman expansion, when
alliances were fluid, business concerns trumped plans
for crusade, and Mehmed II’s ultimate triumph in the
region was still in the future. The battle between the
Turkmens and the Ottomans may have had only
momentary relevance for Florentine viewers. The cas-
sone painting nevertheless suggests a complex and
nuanced understanding of the region, its history, and
its various inhabitants.
Although Bessarion’s Encomium on Trebizond did
not directly influence the creation of the Florentine
wedding chest, both works employed a dual temporal
scheme, juxtaposing past and present. Bessarion
describes the painted interior of the imperial palace:
All round, on the walls, is painted the choir of the
emperors, both those who have ruled our land and their
ancestors; also painted there are the dangers our city has
undergone and those who in attacking it have done so
to their own detriment.79
The cassone similarly recalls Timur’s 1402 victory at
Ankara while depicting the Turkmen victories of 1459–
60. The Trapezuntine frescoes and the cassone panel
each focus on the theme of legitimate succession. So
too each serves an apotropaic function: by depicting
victories in the past and present, these painted histo-
ries discourage future attacks and presage a triumphant
future. The Trebizond wedding chest is a “composite
muq29-Baskins_CS5ME.indd 14
enterprise,” representing contemporary events viewed
through humanist rhetoric. As Margaret Meserve ex-
plains, “the critical analysis of literal ‘facts’ was central,
but could never take place at the expense of the larger
moral or political point of the work.”80 The Trebizond
cassone produced by Apollonio di Giovanni and Marco
del Buono likewise drew on the literal fact of Uzun
Hasan’s momentary success to make larger claims about
the triumph of Christian faith, politics, and profijit.
Department of Art and Art History,
Tufts University, Medford, Mass.
NOTES
Author’s note: The European Painting Department at the Met-
ropolitan Museum of Art in New York kindly allowed me access
to the curatorial fijiles relating to the Trebizond cassone in the
fall of 2003. My colleagues at Tufts University, Eva Hofffman and
Beatrice Manz, encouraged my work on this topic, while a num-
ber of individuals provided assistance: James G. Harper, Karen
Leader, Christina Maranci, Margaret Meserve, Jacqueline Marie
Musacchio, Gülru Necipoğlu, Jefffrey Ravel, Elizabeth Rodini,
Stefan Wolohojian, John E. Woods, and an anonymous reviewer
for Muqarnas. David Roxburgh helped me to obtain a photo-
graph from the Topkapı Palace Museum Library. This project
benefijitted from a Faculty Research Award and a Mellon-funded
sabbatical at Tufts in 2001–2. An Aga Khan Postdoctoral Fel-
lowship at Harvard University in 2009–10 provided additional
support for my current book project, which includes a version
of this chapter.
1. Ellen Callmann, Apollonio di Giovanni (Oxford: Claren-
don Press, 1974), 48–51, 63–64. The chest was fijirst pub-
lished by Werner Weisbach, “Eine Darstellung der Letzten
Deutschen Kaiserkrönung in Rom,” Zeitschrift für Bildende
Kunst, n.s., 24 (1913): 262–64; see also Paul Schubring, Cas-
soni: Truhen und Truhenbilder der italienischen Frührenais-
sance, 2 vols. (Leipzig: K. W. Hiersemann, 1915–23), 1:283.
Conservation of the Trebizond chest at the Metropolitan
Museum of Art has recently revealed that the various pan-
els were not originally part of the same piece of furniture:
see entry number 56 by Deborah Krohn in Art and Love in
Renaissance Italy, ed. Andrea Bayer (exhibition catalogue)
(New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, and New Haven:
Yale University Press, 2008), 129–33. This fijinding throws
into question the provenance and presumed patronage of
the chest.
2. Domestic painting has been the subject of several recent
exhibitions: The Triumph of Marriage: Painted Cassoni of the
Renaissance, curated by Cristelle Baskins and Alan Chong,
22-5-2012 13:51:36
 THE BRIDE OF TREBIZOND
Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston, 2008; Love and
Marriage in Renaissance Florence: The Courtauld Wedding
Chests, curated by Caroline Campbell, Courtauld Gallery
of Art, London, 2009; and Virtù d’amore: Pittura nuziale nel
Quattrocento fijiorentino, curated by Franca Falletti, Elisa-
betta Nardinocchi, Claudio Paolini, Daniela Parenti, and
Ludovica Sebregondi, Galleria dell’Accademia, Florence,
2010.
3. The bottega book now exists only in a seventeenth-century
copy. While it may include errors or omissions, it is never-
theless an important source of information.
4. For the depiction of contemporary events on cassone
panels, see Jacqueline Marie Musacchio, “The Triumph of 12.
Everyday Life,” in The Triumph of Marriage: Painted Cas-
soni of the Renaissance, ed. Cristelle Baskins (exhibition
catalogue) (Boston: Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum,
in association with Gutenberg Periscope Publishing Ltd.,
2008), 31–46.
5. On Trebizond, see Jakob Philipp Fallmerayer, Original
Fragmente, Chroniken, Inschriften und anderes Materiale
zur Geschichte des Kaisertums Trapezunt, Abhandlungen
der Historischen Classe der Königlich Bayerischen Aka-
demie der Wissenschaften 3–4 (Munich, 1843–44); William
Miller, Trebizond, the Last Greek Empire (London: Society
for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1926; repr. Chicago: 13.
Argonaut, 1969); Alexander A. Vasiliev, “The Empire of
Trebizond in History and Literature,” Byzantion 15 (1940–
41): 316–77; Emile Janssens, Trébizonde en Colchide (Brus-
sels: University Press of Brussels, 1969); Anthony Bryer, The
Empire of Trebizond and the Pontos (London: Variorum
Reprints, 1980); and Antony Eastmond, Art and Identity
in Thirteenth-Century Byzantium: Hagia Sophia and the
Empire of Trebizond (Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing/Vario- 14.
rum, 2004).
6. For contemporary battles in fijifteenth-century painting, see
M. O. Tafrali, “La siège de Constantinople dans les fresques 15.
des églises de Bukovine,” in Mélanges offferts à M. Gustave
Schlumberger, membre de l’Institut, à l’occasion du quatre-
vingtième anniversaire de sa naissance (Paris: Paul Geuth-
ner, 1924), 456–61; and Paul Schubring, “Das Blutbad von
Otranto in der Malerei des Quattrocento,” Monatshefte für
Kunstwissenschaft 7–8 (1908): 593–601. 16.
7. Schubring, Cassoni, 283.
8. Callmann, Apollonio di Giovanni, 48–51, 63–64. 17.
9. E. H. Gombrich, “Apollonio di Giovanni: A Florentine Cas-
sone Workshop Seen Through the Eyes of a Humanist Poet,”
in Norm & Form: Studies in the Art of the Renaissance (repr.
London and New York: Phaidon, 1978), 143n42. See also In
the Light of Apollo: Italian Renaissance and Greece, ed. Mina
Gregori, 2 vols. (Milan: Silvana, 2003), 1:174–79; 2:212–16.
10. The inscription was so faint that Weisbach made no men-
tion of it when he published the chest. See entry no. 56 by
Krohn, in Bayer, Art and Love in Renaissance Italy, 130.
11. John Pope-Hennessy and Keith Christiansen, “Secular
Painting in 15th-Century Tuscany: Birth Trays, Cassone
Panels, and Portraits,” Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulle-
muq29-Baskins_CS5ME.indd 15
15
tin 38, 1 (Summer 1980): 13, 18–19. Andrea Paribeni extends
this reading in “Iconografijia, committenza, topografijia di
Costantinopoli: Sul cassone di Apollonio di Giovanni con
la ‘Conquista di Trebisonda,’ ” Rivista dell’Istituto nazionale
d’archeologia e storia dell’arte 56 (2001): 266–69; Andrea
Paribeni, “Una testimonianza iconografijica della battaglia
di Ankara (1402) in Apollonio di Giovanni,” in Europa e
Islam tra i secoli XIV e XVI, ed. Michele Bernardini (Naples:
Istituto universitario orientale, 2002), 427–41. I had no
knowledge of Paribeni’s work on the Trebizond chest until
the late stages of my research; while I agree with many of
his points, I reached my conclusions independently.
See also Angelo Michele Piemontese, “Beltramo Mignanelli
senese biografo di Tamerlano,” Oriente Moderno 15, 2 (1996):
213–26; Margaret Meserve, “From Samarkand to Scythia:
Reinventions of Asia in Renaissance Geography and Politi-
cal Thought,” in Pius II, “el più expeditivo pontifijice”: Selected
Studies on Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini, ed. Zweder von
Martels and Arjo Vanderjagt (Leiden: Brill, 2003), 31–35;
Margaret Meserve, Empires of Islam in Renaissance Histori-
cal Thought (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press,
2008), 203–17. See also Nancy Bisaha, Creating East and
West: Renaissance Humanists and the Ottoman Turks (Phila-
delphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006).
Reinhard Steiner, “Tamerlan—der ‘Zorn Gottes’ als Georgs-
ritter? Legende und historische Anspielung in Pisanellos
Georgsfresko in der Chiesa di Sant’Anastasia zu Verona,”
Pantheon 54 (1996): 26–37. Steiner refers to images of
Timur wearing a turban, dressed in armor, and carrying
a scimitar in some fijifteenth-century illustrated histories:
see, for example, the Crespi chronicle (Milan), a Venetian
chronicle (Turin), and the Corsini chronicle (Rome).
Antonio di Pietro Averlino, known as Filarete, Treatise on
Architecture, ed. and trans. John Spencer (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1965), 119.
See Patricia Lurati, “Il Trionfo di Tamerlano. Una nuova let-
tura iconografijica di un cassone del Metropolitan Museum
of Art,” Mitteilungen des Kunshistorischen Instituts in Flo-
renz 49, 1–2 (2005): 108. Paribeni, “Una testimonianza
iconografijica,” 432, also notes the lack of iron chains for
“Bayezid.”
Paribeni, “Iconografijia, committenza, topografijia,” 266; Pari-
beni, “Una testimonianza iconografijica,” 430.
Callmann, Apollonio di Giovanni, 33, argued that the artist
characteristically depicted Greeks with tall conical hats
while he showed the Turks wearing turbans. The janissary
caps were correctly identifijied by Paul Watson, “Apollo-
nio di Giovanni and Ancient Athens,” Bulletin of the Allen
Memorial Art Museum 37 (1979–80): 12–13. On Ottoman tur-
bans, see Julian Raby, Venice, Dürer and the Oriental Mode
(Totowa, N.J.: Islamic Art Publications, 1982), 35–41; see
also Giovanna Lazzi, “Novità e persistenza nelle tipologie
vestimentarie al tempo del Concilio: Dalla moda ‘alla fran-
ciosa’ a quella ‘all’orientale’,” in Firenze e il Concilio del 1439:
Convegno di studi, 29 novembre–2 dicembre 1989, ed. Paulo
Viti, 2 vols. (Florence: L. S. Olschki, 1994), 1:389-407; and
22-5-2012 13:51:36
 16 CRISTELLE BASKINS
Patrizia Fabbri, ed., L’abito per il corpo, il corpo per l’abito:
Islam e Occidente a confronto (Florence: Museo Stibbert,
1998).
18. Ruy González de Clavijo, Narrative of the Embassy of Ruy
Gonzalez de Clavijo to the Court of Timour at Samarcand,
A.D. 1403–6, ed. and trans. Clements R. Markham (London:
Hakluyt Society, 1859), 60–66, 198. See David J. Roxburgh,
“Ruy González de Clavijo’s Narrative of Courtly Life and
Ceremony in Timur’s Samarkand, 1404,” in The ‘Book’ of
Travels: Genre, Ethnology, and Pilgrimage, 1250–1700, ed.
Palmira Brummett (Leiden: Brill, 2009), 113–58.
19. On the Encomium, which dates to before 1439, see Cyril A.
Mango, comp., The Art of the Byzantine Empire, 312–1453:
Sources and Documents (Englewood Clifffs, N.J.: Prentice
Hall, 1972), 252–53.
20. See Janssens, Trébizonde, fijigs. 14, 31, 56.
21. Gospel Lectionary, Byzantine, 11th century, with title page
inserted ca.1511–12: Florence, Biblioteca Laurenziana, Ms.
Medici Palatina 244, fol. IV. See Byzantium: Faith and Power
(1261–1557), ed. Helen C. Evans (exhibition catalogue) (New
York: Metropolitan Museum of Art and New Haven: Yale
University Press, 2004), 514, 542–43.
22. Callmann, Apollonio di Giovanni, 34, 48–49; Pope-Hennessy
and Christiansen, “Secular Painting,” 19. No original Buon-
delmonti maps survive; of the extant copies, only those
dating from 1465 or afterward show Constantinople as
accurately as it appears on the Trebizond cassone panel:
see Ian R. Manners, “Constructing the Image of a City: The
Representation of Constantinople in Christopher Buondel-
monti’s Liber Insularum Archipelagi,” Annals of the Asso-
ciation of American Geographers 87, 1 (1997): 72–102. For
a detailed analysis of the depiction of Constantinople on
the Trebizond cassone, see Paribeni, “Iconografijia, commit-
tenza, topografijia,” 279–304.
23. Lurati, “Il Trionfo di Tamerlano,” 103–4.
24. Anthony Bryer, “The Littoral of the Empire of Trebizond in
Two Fourteenth-Century Portolano Maps,” Archeion Pon-
tou 24 (1961): 97–127; Lurati, “Il Trionfo di Tamerlano,” 104.
25. Paribeni, “Iconografijia, committenza, topografijia,” 260–61.
The drawing has been dated circa 1453 and attributed to a
Venetian spy: see Franz Babinger, Mehmed the Conqueror
and His Time, trans. Ralph Manheim (Princeton, N.J.:
Princeton University Press, 1978), pl. IX; Franz Babinger,
“Ein venedischer Lageplan der Feste Rumeli Hisary,” La
Bibliofijilia 57 (1955): 188–95. For Mehmed’s architectural
patronage, see Gülru Necipoğlu, Architecture, Ceremonial,
and Power: The Topkapı Palace in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth
Centuries (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1991).
26. Wilhelm Heyd, Histoire du commerce du Levant au Moyen-
Age (Leipzig: Harrassowitz, 1885–86), 360–65. Venetian
or Genoese sailors appear in an illuminated manuscript
commissioned by the emperor of Trebizond; see Yannis D.
Nakas, “14th-Century Galleys in the Black Sea: Ships in the
Romance of Alexander the Great,” The International Journal
of Nautical Archaeology 37, 1 (2008): 77–87.
27. Miller, Trebizond, 38. See also Francesco Balducci Pegolotti,
La Pratica della mercatura, ed. Allen Evans (Cambridge:
muq29-Baskins_CS5ME.indd 16
Mediaeval Academy of America, 1936), 31. In general, see
Olivia Remie Constable, Housing the Stranger in the Medi-
terranean World: Lodging, Trade, and Travel in Late Antiq-
uity and the Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge Univer-
sity Press, 2003).
28. See Miller, Trebizond, 35–37, for the vengeance taken on
Trebizond by a fourteenth-century Genoese noble named
Megollo Lercari. This subject is treated in my current book
project.
29. Miller, Trebizond, 93.
30. Giuseppe Müller, Documenti sulle relazioni delle città
toscane coll’oriente cristiano e coi Turchi fijino all’anno
MDXXXI (Florence: M. Cellinie, 1879), 186–87.
31. Heyd, Histoire du commerce, 363–64, notes the vari-
ous spellings of this individual’s name in contemporary
documents: Alighieris, Aligerius, de Algeorii, de Alguri,
de Alchiere, and de Aldigeriis. For more details about his
role as merchant and ambassador, see Anthony Bryer,
“Ludovico da Bologna and the Georgian and Anatolian
Embassy of 1460–1461,” Bedi Kartlisa 19–20 (1965): 185–86.
After the fall of Trebizond, Alighieri pursued a career at
the Burgundian court: see Luise Michaelsen, “Michael
Alighieri, Gesandter Kaiser Davids von Trapezunt am Hof
der Herzöge von Burgund (1461–1470),” Archeion Pontou
41 (1987): 175–200. For Alighieri’s Genoese safeconduct of
1470, see Amedeo Vigna, Codice diplomatico delle colonie
Tauro-Liguri durante la signoria dell’Ufffijicio di S. Giorgio
(MCCCCLIII–MCCCCLXXV), Atti della Società ligure di sto-
ria patria 7,1 (Genoa: Tipografijia del R.I. dei Sordo-Muti,
1871), 677, document DCCCCV. Alighieri died in 1477: see
Jacques Paviot, “Le Grand Duc de Ponant et le Prêtre Jean.
Les ducs de Bourgogne et les Chrétiens orientaux à la fijin
du moyen âge,” Oriente et Occidente tra medioevo ed età
moderna. Studi in onore di Geo Pistarino II (Genoa: Brigati,
1997), 949–67; and Jacques Paviot, Les ducs de Bourgogne,
la croisade, et l’Orient: Fin XIVe–XVe siècle (Paris: Presses de
l’Université de Paris-Sorbonne, 2003).
32. Breyer “Ludovico da Bologna,” 188–89.
33. Miller, Trebizond, 27.
34. Callmann, Apollonio di Giovanni, 50; Paribeni, “Iconografijia,
committenza, topografijia,” 265, 276; Paribeni, “Una testi-
monianza iconografijica,” 436. On the Turkmens, see Hans
Robert Roemer, “The Turkmen Dynasties,” in The Cam-
bridge History of Iran, vol. 6, The Timurid and Safavid Peri-
ods, ed. Peter Jackson and Laurent Lockhart (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1986), 168–88; John E. Woods,
The Aqquyunlu: Clan, Confederation, Empire (Salt Lake City:
University of Utah Press, 1999); and Meserve, Empires of
Islam, 223–33.
35. Callmann, Apollonio di Giovanni, 50–51. For Renaissance
defijinitions of the Teucri, see Robert Schwoebel, The Shadow
of the Crescent: The Renaissance Image of the Turk, 1453–1517
(New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1967), 32, 148–49, 204; Robert
Black, Benedetto Accolti and the Florentine Renaissance
(New York: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 226–40;
James Hankins, “Renaissance Crusaders: Humanist Cru-
sade Literature in the Age of Mehmed II,” Dumbarton Oaks
22-5-2012 13:51:36
 THE BRIDE OF TREBIZOND
Papers 49 (1995): 111–207; Bisaha, Creating East and West,
56, 63, 89–90; James Harper, “Turks as Trojans; Trojans as
Turks: Visual Imagery of the Trojan War and the Politics of
Cultural Identity in Fifteenth-Century Europe,” in Postco-
lonial Approaches to the European Middle Ages: Translating
Cultures, ed. Ananya Jahanara Kabir and Deanne Williams
(New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 151–79; and
Meserve, Empires of Islam, 22–64.
36. See Anthony D’Elia, “Genealogy and the Limits of Pan-
egyric: Turks and Huns in Fifteenth-Century Epithalamia,”
Sixteenth Century Journal 34, 4 (2003): 982–91.
37. Ellen Callmann pioneered this approach in “The Growing
Threat to Marital Bliss as Seen in Fifteenth-Century Flo-
rentine Paintings,” Studies in Iconography 5 (1979): 73–92.
See also Cristelle L. Baskins, Cassone Painting, Humanism,
and Gender in Early Modern Italy (New York: Cambridge
University Press, 1998).
38. Babinger, Mehmed the Conqueror, 190. See also Rustam Shu-
kurov, “The Campaign of Shaykh Djunayd Safawī against
Trebizond (1456 AD/860 H),” Byzantine and Modern Greek
Studies 17 (1993): 127–40.
39. See Bryer, Empire of Trebizond, 135, and Appendix II;
Anthony Bryer, “Greek Historians on the Turks: The Case
of the First Byzantine-Ottoman Marriage,” in The Writing
of History in the Middle Ages: Essays Presented to Richard
William Southern, ed. Ralph Henry Carless Davis and John
Michael Wallace-Hadrill (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981),
471–93; Woods, The Aqquyunlu, 34.
40. Roemer, “Turkmen Dynasties,” 172; Shukurov, “Campaign
of Shaykh Djunayd Safawī,”130.
41. Charles Diehl, “La Princesse de Trebizond,” in Dans l’Orient
Byzantin (Paris: E. de Boccard, 1917), 203–27; Michel
Kuršanskis, “Autour de la dernière princesse de Trébi-
zonde: Théodora, fijille de Jean IV et épouse d’Uzun Hasan,”
Archeion Pontou 34 (1978–79): 77–87; Bryer, Empire of Trebi-
zond, Appendix II, n. 146; Woods, The Aqquyunlu, 88.
42. Woods, The Aqquyunlu, 242, defijinitively rejects the idea
that Sara Hatun was Christian. On Uzun Hasan’s supposed
Christianity, see Meserve, Empires of Islam, 226.
43. For a translation of Zorzi’s text, see Guglielmo Berchet,
La Repubblica di Venezia e la Persia (Turin: G. B. Paravia,
1865; repr. Tehran: Imperial Organization for Social Ser-
vices, 1976), document 1, 100. For intermarriage as a con-
version strategy over a century earlier, see James D. Ryan,
“Christian Wives of Mongol Khans: Tartar Queens and Mis-
sionary Expectations in Asia,” Journal of the Royal Asiatic
Society, 3rd ser., 8, 3 (April 1998): 411–21; and Adam Knobler,
“Pseudo-Conversions and Patchwork Pedigrees: The Chris-
tianization of Muslim Princes and the Diplomacy of Holy
War,” Journal of World History 7, 2 (1996): 181–97.
44. See Antonio Medin, “Per l’origine della voce ‘sancassan’:
Le gesta di Husun Hasan in un cantare del sec. XV,” Atti del
Reale Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti 87 (1927–28),
799–814, stanzas 9 and 22. See also Meserve, Empires of
Islam, 228.
45. Babinger, Mehmed the Conqueror, 190; Woods, The
Aqquyunlu, 89–90.
muq29-Baskins_CS5ME.indd 17
17
46. Roemer, “Turkmen Dynasties,” 177.
47. Babinger, Mehmed the Conqueror, 192; Woods, The
Aqquyunlu, 89–90.
48. Colin Imber, The Ottoman Empire, 1300–1481 (Istanbul: Isis
Press, 1990), 177; Woods, The Aqquyunlu, 90.
49. Steven Runciman, The Fall of Constantinople, 1453 (Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1965), 174, notes
that Mehmed stopped to take possession of Koylu Hisar
prior to the fijinal push for Trebizond; see also Woods, The
Aqquyunlu, 90.
50. He is identifijied as David Komnenos by Callmann, Apollonio
di Giovanni, 49, as well as by Rosamund Mack, Bazaar to
Piazza: Islamic Trade and Italian Art, 1300–1600 (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 2001), 156.
51. Leon Battista Alberti, On Painting, ed. Martin Kemp (New
York: Penguin Press, 1991), 78.
52. In an earlier, unpublished version of this essay, I proposed
that the subsidiary fijigure was Uzun Hasan’s defeated
brother, Jahangir. The entry by Krohn in Bayer, Art and
Love, 133, refers to that preliminary work, which I have now
revised.
53. For Akkuyunlu identifijication with the Timurids see, Babin-
ger, Mehmed the Conqueror, 190; Sholeh A. Quinn, “Notes on
Timurid Legitimacy in Three Safavid Chronicles,” Iranian
Studies 31, 2 (1998): 149–58; Maria Eva Subtelny, “Centraliz-
ing Reform and Its Opponents in the Late Timurid Period,”
Iranian Studies 21, 1–2 (1988): 123–51; and Andrew J. New-
man, Safavid Iran: Rebirth of a Persian Empire (New York:
I. B.Tauris, 2006), 10–11.
54. Meserve, “From Samarkand to Scythia,” 33; Meserve,
Empires of Islam, 216.
55. Weisbach, “Eine Darstellung,” 264. On Bessarion, see Raoul
Manselli, “Il cardinale Bessarione contro il pericolo turco
e l’Italia,” Miscellanea Francescana 73 (1973): 314–26, and
Johannes Irmscher, “Bessarion als griechischer Patriot,”
Miscellanea Marciana di studi Bessarionei (Padua: Antenor,
1976), 175–85.
56. Meserve, Empires of Islam, 226.
57. Paribeni, “Iconografijia, committenza, topografijia,” 276; Pari-
beni, “Una testimonianza iconografijica,” 436.
58. Bryer, “Ludovico da Bologna,” 196–98. Questions about the
date and authenticity of the letter have been resolved by
Thierry Ganchou, “La date de la mort du basileus Jean IV
Komnènos de Trébizonde,” Byzantinische Zeitschrift 93, 1
(2000): 113–24.
59. Bryer, “Ludovico da Bologna,” 196. Ganchou, “La date de
la mort,” 121–24, argues that Alighieri composed the letter
in David’s name and that scribal error resulted in the false
date of 1459.
60. See Memoirs of a Renaissance Pope; The Commentaries of
Pius II, trans. Florence A. Gragg, ed. Leona C. Gabel (New
York: Putnam, 1959), 181–84. Pius describes the members
of the Asiatic League, whom he eventually considered
charlatans. Scholars are divided over the authenticity of
Lodovico da Bologna, the Franciscan friar who led the mis-
sion: see the documentary studies by B. Bughetti, “Nuovi
22-5-2012 13:51:36
 18 CRISTELLE BASKINS
documenti intorno a Fr. Lodovico da Bologna, O.F.M. Mis-
sionario e Nunzio Apostolico in Oriente (1460–1461),” Studi
Francescani, 3rd ser., 35 (1938): 128–46; and Angelo Bargel-
lesi Severi, “Nuovi documenti su fr. Lodovico da Bologna,
al secolo Lodovico Severi, Nunzio Apostolico in Oriente
(1455–1457),” Archivum Franciscanum Historicum 69 (1976):
3–22.
61. “Celepino” is the Italian diminutive of the Turkish çelebi
(prince). He was secretly taken to Venice after the fall of
Constantinople in 1453; Pius II later suspected that he was
an imposter. See Franz Babinger, “ ‘Bajezid Osman’ (Calix-
tus Ottomanus), ein Vorläufer und Gegenspieler Dschem
Sultans,” Aufsätze und Abhandlungen zur Geschichte Süd-
osteuropas und der Levante, 3 vols. (Munich: Schmidt &
Klaunig Kiel, 1962–76), 1:297–325; Franz Babinger, Mehmed
the Conqueror, 324–25; Giuseppe Zippel, “Un pretendente
ottomano alla corte dei Papi: Il ‘Turchetto,’ ” in Storia e
cultura del Rinascimento italiano (Padua: Antenore, 1979),
463–82; and John Freely, Jem Sultan: The Adventures of a
Captive Turkish Prince in Renaissance Europe (New York:
Harper Perennial, 2005).
62. Black, Benedetto Accolti, 246–54.
63. Michael E. Mallett, The Florentine Galleys in the Fifteenth
Century (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1967), 68.
64. Black, Benedetto Accolti, 251–52.
65. These mytho-historical fijigures are the subjects of my fijirst
book; see Baskins, Cassone Painting, Humanism, and Gen-
der.
66. Callmann, Apollonio di Giovanni, 63. For eagle heraldry
in the Black Sea region, see Frederick William Hasluck,
“Genoese Heraldry and Inscriptions at Amastra,” Annual
of the British School at Athens 17 (1910–11): 132–44.
67. The Strozzi-Spini hypothesis was based on a suggestion
by Callmann: see Helmut Nickel, “Two Falcon Devices of
the Strozzi: An Attempt at Interpretation,” Metropolitan
Museum Journal 9 (1974): 229–32; and Callmann, Apollonio
di Giovanni, 80–81.
68. Paribeni, “Iconografijia, committenza, topografijia,” 269–74;
Mallett, Florentine Galleys, 166, 171.
69. Lurati, “Il Trionfo di Tamerlano,” 109. However, Filippo’s
name does not appear in the bottega book of Apollonio di
Giovanni and Marco del Buono. Lurati’s suggestion does
not rest on any new documentary evidence.
muq29-Baskins_CS5ME.indd 18
70. In his Cronica, Benedetto Dei describes how Florence
shifted its policy toward Mehmed II and the Ottomans in
the 1460s while Venice fell out of favor with the sultan. See
Babinger, Mehmed the Conqueror, 233–34, 276–77. See also
Venice and the Islamic World, 828–1797, ed. Stefano Carboni
(exhibition catalogue) (New York: Metropolitan Museum
of Art, and New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007).
71. Callmann, Apollonio di Giovanni, 50; Franz Babinger,
“Lorenzo de’Medici e il corte ottomana,” Archivio Storico
Italiano 121 (1963): 308, 312–13.
72. Vladimir Minorsky, La Perse au XVe siècle entre la Turquie et
Venise, Publications de la Societè des études iraniennes et
de l’art persan (Paris, 1933); Roemer, “Turkmen Dynasties,”
176; and Woods, The Aqquyunlu, 114, 231–33.
73. Roemer, “Turkmen Dynasties,” 179; Woods, The Aqquyunlu,
90, 114, 121.
74. Woods, The Aqquyunlu, pl. II. See the facsimile Hünernâme:
Minyatürleri ve sanatçıları, ed. Nigar Anafarta (Istanbul:
Doğan Kardeş, 1969), fol. 170b.
75. Babinger, Mehmed the Conqueror, 326–27; Angelo Michele
Piemontese, “La représentation de Uzun Hasan sur scène à
Rome (2 mars 1473),” Turcica 21, 23 (1991): 191–203; Meserve,
Empires of Islam, 223–24. Guy Le Thiec, “Le Turc en Italie:
Divertissements nobiliares à la Renaissance,” Turcs et tur-
queries (XVIe–XVIIIe siècles), ed. Lucien Bély (Paris: Presses
de l’Université Paris-Sorbonne, 2009), 116.
76. For the ballad, see Medin, “Per l’origine della voce ‘sancas-
san,’ ” 806–14; and for a Venetian proverb referring to Uzun
Hasan, see Venanzio Todesco, “S. Cassiano o uno Scià di
Persia?” Atti del Reale Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere ed
Arti 86 (1926–27): 1369–78. See also Meserve, Empires of
Islam, 226.
77. Babinger, “Bajezid Osman,” 316.
78. Müller, Documenti,182.
79. Mango, Art of the Byzantine Empire, 253.
80. Meserve, “From Samarkand to Scythia,” 38–39. For a recent
reconsideration of anachronism in Renaissance art, see
Alexander Nagel and Christopher S. Wood, Anachronic
Renaissance (New York: Zone Books, 2010). For stimulat-
ing new interpretations in this fijield, see James G. Harper,
ed., The Turk and Islam in the Western Eye: 1450–1750: Visual
Imagery before Orientalism (Burlington, Vt.: Ashgate, 2011).
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