Skanderbeg in literature and art

Skanderbeg has been the subject of many works of art and literature and the inspiration for countless others. It is a motif in the visual arts, the performing arts, poetry, prose and music.

Skanderbeg gathered quite a posthumous reputation in Western Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries. With much of the Balkans under Ottoman rule and with the Turks at the gates of Vienna in 1683, nothing could have captivated readers in the West more than an action-packed tale of heroic Christian resistance to the "Moslem hordes".

There are two literature works on Skanderbeg written in the 15th century. The first was written at the beginning of 1480 by Serbian writer Martin Segon who was Catholic Bishop of Ulcinj and one of the most notable 15th-century humanists. A part of the text he wrote under title Martino Segono di Novo Brdo, vescovo di Dulcigno. Un umanista serbo-dalmata del tardo Quattrocento is short but very important biographical sketch on Skanderbeg (Italian: Narrazioni di Giorgio Castriotto, da i Turchi nella lingua loro chiamato Scander beg, cioe Alesandro Magno). Another 15th century literature work with Skanderbeg as one of the main characters was Memoirs of a janissary (Serbian: Успомене јаничара) written in period 1490—1497 by Konstantin Mihailović, a Serb who was a janissary in Ottoman Army.

In Western Europe the books on Skanderbeg began to appear in the early 16th century. Raffaelo Maffei published in Rome in 1506 his "Commentariorum" in which he published a short biography on Skanderbeg. Two years later one of the earliest works, the Historia de vita et gestis Scanderbegi, Epirotarum Principis (English: History of the life and deeds of Scanderbeg, Prince of the Epirotes) (Rome, 1508), was published a four decades after Skanderbeg's death. This book was written by Albanian historian Marin Barleti (Latin: Marinus Barletius Scodrensis), who, after experiencing the Ottoman capture of his native Shkodër at firsthand, settled in Padua where he became rector of the parish church of St. Stephan. Barleti dedicated his work to Don Ferrante Kastrioti, Skanderbeg's grandchild, and to posterity. The book was first published in Latin. Barleti is sometimes inaccurate in favour of his hero, for example, according to Gibbon, Barleti claims that the Sultan was killed by disease under the walls of Krujë. Barleti's inaccuracies had also been noticed prior to Gibbon by Laonikos Chalkokondyles. Barleti made up spurious correspondence between Vladislav II of Wallachia and Skanderbeg wrongly assigning it to the year 1443 instead to the year of 1444. Barleti also invented correspondence between Skanderbeg and Sultan Mehmed II to match his interpretations of events.

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