Italian, North

An unidentified battle rages before a mountainous landscape. The picture may be a later copy of one of the lost frescoes by Piero della Francesca in the ducal palace in Ferrara. Leonello d’Este (1407–1450), Marquis of Ferrara, appears to be portrayed in profile at bottom left, suggesting that he...

An ageing bearded man looks out of the painting, holding a statuette in his left hand. He is painted within an oval fictive stone frame and the statuette emerges from the painted space into our own, making the sitter seem all the more lifelike. The statuette indicates that the man represented her...

This unidentified woman wears a costume dating from the second half of the 1560s or early 1570s. Her feathered jewelled hat is influenced by fashion in Lombardy and Venice, and her costume resembles that in a portrait drawing of a similar date attributed to Sofonisba Anguissola (Staatliche Kunsts...

This unidentified bearded man is depicted bust length, gazing obliquely into the distance. His right hand holds the edge of his black robe, revealing a small gold ring with a green stone on his little finger. He wears sober, unostentatious clothes, and a black skullcap with a large black hat.The...

This painting was once a portrait, but it was altered to represent a saint. The hair of the figure was originally completely different, her hand was resting on a different object and her dress was decorated with gold around the edges. Later, after the dress and background had been completed, she...

Saint George, with the remains of the dragon he has slain beside him, and an unidentified female saint kneel with their hands on their hearts in reverence. This painting is a fragment of a larger work, probably a single-panel altarpiece of the Virgin and Child with saints. The Virgin and Child wo...

The saint in this painting carries a bishop’s crosier and wears the white habit of the Carthusian Order. The Carthusians were an enclosed Catholic religious order of monks and nuns founded by Bruno of Cologne in 1084. Bruno was called to Rome by Pope Urban II, and while there founded a new hermit...

This painting is more likely to be an imaginary scene than a view of a theatre that actually existed. It may have been inspired by stage designs by the Bibiena family from Bologna, who were known for their highly ornate sets produced for festivities at many European courts, especially the Hapsbur...

The Virgin is seated on the ground in a rural landscape outside a sixteenth-century town, as the ‘Madonna of Humility’. The Christ Child lies across her lap, and gazes up at her while she looks down tenderly. Our viewpoint is very low, so we are also looking up at the Virgin, like Christ. The gro...

The Virgin Mary crosses her hands in adoration as she gazes down at the naked Christ Child who sleeps on a ledge or table in front of her. His sleep is intended to foreshadow his death. This type of composition with saints accompanying the Virgin in an informal grouping is known as a sacra conver...

An elderly man in a lynx-lined jacket looks up from the large book he has been reading. He sits at a table covered with a Mamluk carpet, on which a gilded clock and two letters rest.The letters are both inscribed identically in Italian: ‘To the most Reverend Monsignor Giuliano with the most honou...

The Virgin Mary sits on a stone bench and holds the infant Christ on a cushion on her lap. She may have just lifted him and the cushion from the low wall in front of her.The flowers of the rose bush behind Christ are associated with purity and suffering, and are intended to remind us of Christ’s...

The people in this group portrait have not been identified, but they may be from Venice as the dress of the men is Venetian in style. The child’s costume, which is recognisably that of a girl, can be dated to around 1540.The central man – probably the girl’s father – holds her protectively in his...

This young lady appears to be drawing back a green curtain to look out of an open window. She does not look directly at us, but sidelong at something or someone else. She holds an object in her hand which she may be about to drop over the window ledge as a token to her admirer below.The provocati...