In 1446 August, the Genoese aristocracy welcomed the arrival of Cyriac of Ancona. Cyriac is well aware of the city of Genoa: he was there several times during his life and, mainly, he was very familiar with a lot of Genoese aristocrats living in the East, in Aegean and Black sea colonies. In the Eastern Empire which very soon will see the fall of Costantinopoli, he acted as a very careful political mediator and acknowledged connoisseur of the antique. He was a private counseller of Pope Eugene IV, and at the same time, he obtained a "free pass" by the Sultan Murad II, with the possibility to explore Asian territories on paths still today considered to be explored only in more recent times. Due to his knowledge and to his love for the witnesses of Classical Greece, he firmly and openly invited the local sultan to preserve as a memory of a greatest past the ruins of Cyzicus temple, and a few years later he followed Rodi's Knight to see the "Mausoleo di Alicarnasso" becoming the last fortress to avoid Turks invasion. This "neutral" role (it will not be neutral entirely, obviously) during a period often described by scholars as clearly divided between East and West, offers the unique opportunity to try to read the knowledge inherited from the East into the "creation" of the Italian Renaissance language, in art and culture in general.
The Hero of Two Worlds: Politics, Archeology and Passion for the Antique in the “Cultural Mediation” of Cyriac of Ancona between East and West, with a Note on the Birth of Venus by Botticelli
Giacomo Montanari
2020-01-01
Abstract
In 1446 August, the Genoese aristocracy welcomed the arrival of Cyriac of Ancona. Cyriac is well aware of the city of Genoa: he was there several times during his life and, mainly, he was very familiar with a lot of Genoese aristocrats living in the East, in Aegean and Black sea colonies. In the Eastern Empire which very soon will see the fall of Costantinopoli, he acted as a very careful political mediator and acknowledged connoisseur of the antique. He was a private counseller of Pope Eugene IV, and at the same time, he obtained a "free pass" by the Sultan Murad II, with the possibility to explore Asian territories on paths still today considered to be explored only in more recent times. Due to his knowledge and to his love for the witnesses of Classical Greece, he firmly and openly invited the local sultan to preserve as a memory of a greatest past the ruins of Cyzicus temple, and a few years later he followed Rodi's Knight to see the "Mausoleo di Alicarnasso" becoming the last fortress to avoid Turks invasion. This "neutral" role (it will not be neutral entirely, obviously) during a period often described by scholars as clearly divided between East and West, offers the unique opportunity to try to read the knowledge inherited from the East into the "creation" of the Italian Renaissance language, in art and culture in general.
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