Hi again!
It's been a bit of a while since I posted an update to this thread! I've been going back to art references to find some inspiration for more Byzantines (and to avoid putting all my eggs in one Riccardian Virgil shaped basket!). I'm operating on the assumption that a lot of depictions of Biblical Romans in 15th century artwork tend to use their contemporary Byzantines to allegorically represent the ancient Romans. Italian artwork from around the 1430s onwards seems roughly consistent with depictions of the Byzantine delegation at the Council of Ferrara-Florence (with a few added extras, presumably for artistic license!), compared to
Byzantine icons which are far more in-line with much older iconographic artwork, so I tend to assume that they're not necessarily accurate to the 15th century equipment and clothing.
In this case, I've decided to go into Flemish artwork for a few inspirations, it's an extra step removed from actual Byzantines, where it may be that the Flemish artists only heard about the Byzantines second-hand from Italian descriptions, or would have Byzantine visitors to the courts of France and Burgundy who would probably attract a lot of attention. That said, I like to use the Flemish paintings because the scenes themselves are generally extremely busy, so there's always a pretty varied cast of characters to use for inspiration!
First up, in Jan van Eyck's
Crucifixion and Last Judgement diptych from the 1430s, these two soldiers show up near the bottom. The one on the right has clothes that are
broadly consistent with other contemporary depictions of Byzantines, while the one on the left is a little closer to how Stradiots tend to be depicted (with a few changes).
I thought they were pretty striking designs so I decided to convert up some figures based on them
And from the back to emulate the painting!
For a third figure, I went to André d'Ypres'
Crucifixion from roughly 1450. There's another figure towards the bottom of the painting who had a pretty interesting pose, so I decided to use that as the basis for another figure, though I went back to Il Virgilio Riccardiano for the outfit itself, considering the painting seemed like the clothes were a little too 'Western'
And here's the three of them together
Hopefully they've turned out ok! My plan is to finish up a unit of 12 of these lighter infantry to use as either levy billmen in Never Mind the Billhooks lists, or alternatively to have them as a block of dismounted Stradioti for later Renaissance/Italian Wars lists
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April 24, 2024, 04:46:15 PM
September 21, 2012, 09:39:11 PM
