Looking for Images/Books of Palaeologos Dynasty Byzantines Circa 1453

[Atheling]

As the title suggests I am looking for credible sources and images of the Palaeologan Byzantines circa 1453

It's for a future project  

EDIT: To be more specific:

Guards
Elite and Regular Pronoiarios
Psiloi
Hoplitai/Scutatoi
Skythikoi
Turkopoloi
Latinikoi Infiantry and Cavalry (would these have absobed Eastern influences in armour and weaponry?)
Anything I've missed?

[HappyChappy439]

It's a bit of a shame that visual sources for the 15th century Byzantines are so hard to find!

I think the most detailed contemporary(ish) images are probably Italian or Flemish works, but most of them are sort of speculative rather than strictly accurate, as a heads up! My understanding is that after the Council of Florence in the 1430s, John VIII Palaiologos and his entourage managed to capture the imagination of a lot of artists, so you see a lot of references to his appearance in allegorical or Biblical work.

Here's the Emperor himself, a tad early for 1453 but probably not too far off!


And from there I tend to assume that "Romans" in Biblical paintings from the 15th century are usually modelled on the Byzantines of John's entourage. Here's some examples from Jan van Eyck's Crucifixion and the Last Judgement Diptych:


In this one the chap on the right seems to be a bit more fantastical, while there's a pure Western looking helmet on the left so I assume that's just van Eyck drawing from his own experience, but the horsemen in the foreground are consistent with other Byzantines if that helps


And in another Flemish crucifixion work from the 15th century, we've got some other Romans with pointy Byzantine hats or Turbans, and a curious brigandine on the right too!


I can't think of any others off the top of my head but I'm pretty sure I've seen other Crucifixion/Passion paintings with these sorts of allegorical Byzantines-as-Ancient-Romans

It's not strictly Palaiologan, but there's a Florentine painting from 1462 of (we think) the Fall of Trebizond, which shows Trapezuntine military forces, where they look very similar to the Ottoman army:


Here's some cropped examples from that same work, where we can see the Trapezuntines wielding recurve bows, and curved swords, and a mix of turbans and the large Byzantine hats




And here's what I assume are some prisoners being herded along by their Ottoman captors:



There's also the 14th century manuscript of the Alexander Romance from Trebizond, which again is a bit early but shows some images of Byzantine/Trapezuntine soldiers from that period, but a lot can happen in a century, so the appearance probably changed since then!



Also, while they're not the *most* detailed around the 15th century specifically, there's the two Osprey Men-at-Arms books "Byzantine Armies AD 1118-1461" and "Byzantine Naval Forces 1261-1461." They've got some illustrations of various specific Byzantine forces, including the foreign contingents if that helps!

From what I can tell, as a general rule the later Stratioti tend to be a fairly close analogue to the late Byzantine armies, lots of robes, bright colours and big hats!

[Atheling]

Thanks HappyChappy439. 

That's quite a wealth of information contained in just those few images and is going to take some digesting.

I can see already that to put a force of any real size on the table top is going to take some serious detailed conversion work and a very long time.

Oh, what i would do for a Palaeologos Dynasty range 

[SJWi]

Hi, Ian Heath's "Armies of the Middle ages" Vol 2 has several line drawings of late Byzantines. Concord Publications "The Easter Romans 330-1461AD" has several plates of late 14th/15th century Byzantines.

I don't know if these are still easily available.

   

[Atheling]

Hi, Ian Heath's "Armies of the Middle ages" Vol 2 has several line drawings of late Byzantines. Concord Publications "The Easter Romans 330-1461AD" has several plates of late 14th/15th century Byzantines.

I don't know if these are still easily available.

 

Thanks SJWi.

I have both books. I was really hoping (probably against hope ) that there was something out there that was much more comprehensive.

Someone out there has to have printed a book with lots of plates referencing the early and late 15th Century Byzantine army 

[commissarmoody]

Yeah sadly it's pretty hard to find many contemporary and modern art of mid 15th century Byzantium troops.
And doesn't seemed to get much love miniature wise.

[Diablo Jon]

Was there even much of a Byzantium army by circa 1453? The defenders of Constantinople where mostly armed citizens and Italian mercenaries weren't they? I'd hazard a guess that the reason it's hard to find much info is that Byzantium was pretty much military defunct by the mid 15th century.

[Atheling]

Was there even much of a Byzantium army by circa 1453? The defenders of Constantinople where mostly armed citizens and Italian mercenaries weren't they? I'd hazard a guess that the reason it's hard to find much info is that Byzantium was pretty much military defunct by the mid 15th century.

Well, no quite. 5000 out of the 7000 defenders were Byzantine soldiers. The citizens certainly did take part in the defence of the walls because there weren't enough professional soldiers to defend; the inner Theodosian Wall was 5.7 kilometers. That's not to even take into account the two outer walls.

[Diablo Jon]

Well, no quite. 5000 out of the 7000 defenders were Byzantine soldiers. The citizens certainly did take part in the defence of the walls because there weren't enough professional soldiers to defend; the inner Theodosian Wall was 5.7 kilometers. That's not to even take into account the two outer walls.

Not sure they where. According to a census order by Constantine XI of the 9000 strong garrison 4773 where native Byzantines the rest where Venetians, Genoese and Catalans. I had read the
Imperial army was only around 1500 strong in 1453 and the rest where raised the from city population. I imagine quite a bit of 1450s byzantine army could be represented by Perry's European Mercenaries box..boring as that is  .

[Donkeymilkman]

I'd recommend the Rise of Empires (I believe that's the name) Netflix show, about the fall of Constantinople to the Turks, can't imagine they could get away with it being inaccurate, maybe try taking screenshots of scenes when paused to get pictures of the Byzantines. I, myself, am not a big Byzantine history buff but from what I know about Ottoman History the Byzantines are illustrated wearing Middle Eastern/Muslim Armour from contemporary Ottoman records of the time though from what I've read there is speculation on whether this was correct or more of an artistic interpretation. Good luck with your research, hope to see some posts of the project when it comes around!

[HappyChappy439]

Well, no quite. 5000 out of the 7000 defenders were Byzantine soldiers. The citizens certainly did take part in the defence of the walls because there weren't enough professional soldiers to defend; the inner Theodosian Wall was 5.7 kilometers. That's not to even take into account the two outer walls.

If nothing else, the Despots Thomas and Demetrios had enough of a military to have a civil war among themselves in the Morea!

But as a few additional pictures, I've been looking around trying to see if anyone's posted pictures of frescoes in churches or monasteries that might help. At the moment I've not had much luck tracking down anything from the 15th century from Byzantine Greece itself (or at least, Constantinople, Thessaloniki or the Morea/Mystras)

I've found a few posts around with examples from Crete and Cyprus though, they might be a hair more 'latinized' than the core Imperial territories, but they're done by Greek artists, and both territories had pretty close links to the Empire

Here's a 15th century one from the Agia Paraskevi church on Cyprus, where it looks like the 'Romans' in the painting fairly consistently have kettle hats and some embroidered tunics:


There's this one as well from the Agios Ioannis Lampadistis monastery on Cyprus, but with the caveat that I don't know when this one in particular was painted. The narthex of the church was painted by Byzantine refugees after 1453, but other frescoes and murals were only done in the 16th and 17th centuries, as a heads up! But, if nothing else this one is interesting in that the 'Romans' are pretty western looking, with mail shirts and pointy bascinets.



And there's this helpful blog post that describes a 15th century Cretan icon of the crucifixion, the artist (Andreas Pavias) was only born in 1440 though, so the icon was probably only painted in the latter half of the century!

https://russianicons.wordpress.com/tag/cretan-icons/

The examples there look like a pretty frenetic mix of early 15th century Western-style men-at-arms, with more 'modern' mid-15th century armour, and some clearly Byzantine wide-brimmed kettle helms thrown in every so often. So I'd guess if this is anything to go by, the armoured Byzantines of the 1450s didn't look too different to the Latin knights of the 1390s, with the addition of big kettle helms and leather or cloth covered breastplates (or brigandines).   







Hopefully that helps a bit! Or at least, gives a few more ideas for conversions on top of the robes-and-hats Byzantines of the earlier post!

[Atheling]

Thanks Diablo Jon, Donkeymilkman and HappyChappy439.

Very much appreciated- that's certainly quite a lot to absorb! 

i'm sure we would all agree that it is reasonably easy to work out what the Latinikoi men at arms, crossbowmen etc would appear.  think this is going to take some really deep research.

I wonder if there are any books out there that have descriptions of the arms and armour of the Byzantine participants in the siege?

I'm not aware of anything and my amazon searches have not thrown up anything.

[Diablo Jon]

I assume you have the Osprey on late Byzantine armies. It covers everything from the around the 4th crusade until the end last two plates are 15th century soldiers. I mean it's osprey level of detail but some useful stuff anyway.

[Atheling]

I assume you have the Osprey on late Byzantine armies. It covers everything from the around the 4th crusade until the end last two plates are 15th century soldiers. I mean it's osprey level of detail but some useful stuff anyway.

Yeah, and few few other 'artwork' type books such as The Eastern Romans, 330-1461 but I'm dubious about the authenticity of some of the plates- thing is, I don't really know how accurate they are at this moment in time.

[Anderson Collection]

Darrell.

I've been trying to pull something together for this army for years a few pics of my take on it below.
The figures are conversions and some figures commissioned via Ebob some years ago.
Very elusive period.