Portrait of Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta

Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta, the lord of Rimini shown here in strict profile, was one of the most notorious soldiers-for-hire of his age. A few years after this portrait, Pope Pius the Second so loathed him that he had him publicly condemned and burned in effigy in Rome, in a kind of reverse canonisation that consigned him to hell while he was still living. Piero della Francesca painted him around 1450, while also at work in Rimini on a fresco inside Sigismondo's own grand temple-church. The profile pose was borrowed from portrait medals, meant to make a living warlord look like a Roman emperor stamped on a coin. Look closely and you can follow Piero's care in the separate strands of hair and the set of the heavy jaw.