Venice, 1368.
Welcome to the world of Nicolò Saltano, ballot boy to Doge Andrea Contarini, the sixtieth Doge of Venice (1368-1382).
Nico was born in Venice on April 17, 1355 and became Ballot Boy on January 19, 1368, at the age of thirteen. From that moment his life changed irrevocably. Taken from his family and forced to live in the palace as servant of a princely head of state, Nico confronted unimaginable splendor and unfathomable deceit.
THE BALLOT BOY is the story of how Nico survives, learns to separate truth from lies, good men from bad, and ultimately reckons with his own sexuality at a time when being gay was reason to be burned at the stake.
These pages are a visual reference and historical resource for Nico’s world, a psycho-geographical landscape to make another time and place less obscure and unfamiliar.
The west loggia of the Doge’s Palace.