The Iconography of the Last World Emperor: A Study of a Late Fifteenth-Century Prophetic Image

A complex allegorical late fifteenth-century picture of which the original is lost survives only in a series of variously degraded copies, be they either German woodcuts or Italian engravings. This image has remained unsatisfactorily explained, no doubt because of its unconventional iconography. Instead of the usual interpretation of the picture as a satirical comment on the contemporary political situation, we propose to understand it as a prophetic image announcing the imminent coming of the Second Charlemagne – a French king who would become the Last World Emperor – turning thus an anachronistic journalistic picture into a more convincing image of eschatological hope.