PMB Fool and Constantine The Great

Rosanne

Someone remarked to me, that the Visconti Fool looked like Constantine the Great, unhorsed and bereft from the image on a widely available coin.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ignoto,_re_costantino_a_cavallo,_1402.JPG

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Visconti-fool.jpg

I laughed, but was taken by the comment.

The Donation of Constantine.
Around the year 1440, a catholic priest wrote a treatise about how the Donation was a fraudulent document. It had been questioned before, but this expose was widely accepted.
The document gave the Papacy the right to land, as granted by Constantine the Great.

Contemporary opponents of papal powers in Italy emphasized the primacy of civil law and civil jurisdiction, now firmly embodied once again in the Justinian Corpus Juris Civilis. The Florentine chronicler Giovanni Cavalcanti reported that, in the very year of Valla's treatise, Filippo Maria Visconti, Duke of Milan, made diplomatic overtures toward Cosimo de' Medici in Florence, proposing an alliance against the Pope. In reference to the Donation, Visconti wrote: "It so happens that even if Constantine consigned to Sylvester so many and such rich gifts—which is doubtful, because such a privilege can nowhere be found—he could only have granted them for his lifetime: the Empire takes precedence over any lordship."

The only thing I can see is 'a somewhat similar headdress' the laurel leaves have become feathers of the fool, with a club to beat you with.
But it is a thought......
~Rosanne