Portrait of Cardinal Ludovico Trevisan

In 1459 Pope Pius II summoned the leaders of Christendom to the northern Italian town of Mantua, hoping to launch a crusade against the Ottomans, who had taken Constantinople six years before. Among those who came was Cardinal Ludovico Trevisan, a hard man who was as much a soldier and admiral as a churchman. Mantegna, then working nearby in Padua, painted him around that time. There is no flattery in it. The cardinal sits in tight three-quarter view against plain darkness, jaw set, lips closed, the shaved clerical crown and every crease of the face rendered like carved stone. Mantegna built the head to sit in the light as solidly as a Roman marble bust.