Although the date of the work is not clear it was likely to have been some time during 1438 and 1439, the years John was in Italy attending the Council of Ferrara (later moved to Florence).

It is not known whether the emperor himself or his Italian hosts commissioned Pisanello to make the medal, but Leonello d’Este, the heir apparent to the marquisate of Ferrara, has been suggested as the most likely candidate.

Its impact on art was significant: it extended beyond numismatics and the proliferation of outstanding Renaissance medals to influence sculpture and painting.

Renaissance artists subsequently used Pisanello's portrait of John almost as a stock type to represent exotic or antique figures.

The event takes place in a rocky landscape and is framed in the bottom portion by a Greek inscription: ἜPΓON • TÔV • ΠICÁNOV • ZΩΓPÁΦOV (‘The work of Pisano the painter’).

The emperor had been invited to attend the council in Ferrara by pope Eugenius IV to address the question of unifying the Latin and Greek churches.

One of John's chief motivations for unification was to secure help from the western powers in order to meet the constant threat to his crumbling empire from the Turks.

Following its first magnificent opening public session on 9 April 1438, the council was repeatedly postponed until the 8 October to allow the many different representatives of the European rulers to arrive.

[13] John was also criticized by the contemporary Greek chronicler Syropoulos (who was possibly Patriarch Sophronius I of Constantinople when a young cleric) for spending "all his time hunting without bothering in the slightest with ecclesiastical affairs.

One is a highly finished pen drawing of a saddled and harnessed horse from the front and the back (The Louvre, Vallardi, 2468, fol.

The sketches of John on sheets held in Paris and Chicago are the only drawings by Pisanello that can be securely dated and provide firm evidence of his presence in Ferrara.

It has been argued that Pisanello made his drawings at the opening of the first dogmatic session on 8 October 1438 when the emperor, in a characteristic insistence on punctilio, required that he be allowed to proceed on horseback to his throne in the council chamber.

This view argues that the Paris and Chicago leaves show Pisanello's early attempt to formulate the composition of the medal by sketching the emperor in diverse poses wearing different hats and robes.

Pisanello's medal of John can be firmly located within a period when the court at Ferrara was witnessing an escalation in the appreciation of classical learning.

[23] Part of this appreciation gave rise to the study of ancient coins: these were the most enduring and abundant artefacts available from antiquity and Leonello himself was an enthusiastic numismatist.

Franco-Burgundian art in particular celebrated the hunt and certain images of animals by Pisanello are thought to have derived from miniatures from the canonical version of the Livre de Chasse by Gaston Phoebus.

This painting also presents a huntsman on horseback arrested by the sight of a cross and it contains animals that seem to have derived from illuminations in French hunting treatises.

The context of their purchase and the lack of any numismatic precedent for the medals suggests the originals may well have had Byzantine enkolpia as their model: these were sacred objects "worn about the neck and endowed with spiritual efficacy’.

It is certainly plausible that he observed their similarity of style with that of French illuminated manuscripts and therefore hoped to harness, through his medal, their associations with the culture of chivalry rather than antiquity.

[33] The success of Pisanello's medal is evident from the flow of commissions that the artist received from patrons including Filippo Maria Visconti and Francesco Sforza.

It initiated the creation of a new art form in which Pisanello set the highest standards that later medallists found hard to equal.

[34] The success of the medal is also clear from the number of Renaissance sculptors, illuminators and painters who used Pisanello's portrait of John almost as a stock type for figures from distant lands or times.