in cooperation with

In his contribution to the present volume, Marco Bonechi argues that the four Ethiopians likely to have been portrayed in the surviving scenes of the 1481߃ 82 frescoes on the southern wall of the Sistine Chapel are members of the six-person Ethiopian embassy to Pope Sixtus IV, which was guided by Giovan Battista (De) Brocchi da Imola and reached Rome in early November 1481.1 In particular, Bonechi wonders whether ߋAntoniusߌ, chaplain of Nȸguĺ ŭskƼndƼr and head of such an embassy, could be one of them. If so, ߋthe best candidate, given his religious attitude, would be the man kneeling in the Crossing of the Red Sea ߌ most plausibly by Biagio d߈Antonio, ߋnot the man with the intense stare in the Temptation of Moses ߌ by Sandro Botticelli.2 No matter the number of its members, which varies from one to six (or seven) in the different sources, this ߋembassy ߌ was not really sent by Nȸguĺ ŭskƼndƼr, as is apparent from the well-known contemporary evidence offered by the Venetian Minorite Francesco Suriano, a member of the friary of Mount Sion in Jerusalem since 1481;3 by his WÛrttemberg fellow brother Paul Wal