Mantegna’s Black Magus and Prester John

Abstract

On May 27, 1459, Pope Pius II entered Mantua at the head of a triumphal procession to open the Council of Mantua. Dismayed by the fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Turks in 1453, the council issued a call in January 1460 for a crusade to recover lost Christian lands. While the council deliberated, Andrea Mantegna accepted a position as court artist to the council’s host, Ludovico II Gonzaga, Marquis of Mantua. Not long after this, Mantegna painted for Ludovico an Adoration of the Magi in which the Magi lead a strikingly multiethnic entourage