Ludovico Mazzolino

Ludovico Mazzolino made small pictures for people who liked to look closely. His panels are rarely large, but they are packed edge to edge, biblical scenes crammed with figures who gesture and grimace, set against fantastical stone architecture carved with strange antique-looking reliefs. Much of the drama in the faces comes from German prints, which he studied and borrowed from.

He spent his life in Ferrara, then a lively court city in northern Italy ruled by the Este family, and his odd little devotional panels found ready buyers there. Duke Ercole I d'Este commissioned him, and Lucrezia Borgia, the duke's daughter-in-law and a famous name of the age, was among those who appreciated his quirky work.

He died in 1528, during one of the plagues that regularly emptied Italian cities. His signature subject, the boy Christ debating the temple elders in a crowd of astonished faces, he painted again and again, and versions hang today in London, Berlin and beyond.