Ritratto d’uomo

In 1460 Andrea Mantegna took up a post he would keep for the rest of his life, court painter to the Gonzaga rulers of Mantua. This small profile portrait dates from those early court years, and the unnamed man in it looks a great deal like one of the courtiers Mantegna later painted on the walls of the Gonzaga's famous room, the Camera degli Sposi. The strict side-on view is deliberate. Mantegna was fascinated by ancient Rome and collected its coins and medals, where emperors always appear in profile, and he gives this living man the same hard, medal-like dignity. The picture is so close in feeling to Mantegna's brother-in-law Giovanni Bellini that scholars have argued for years over which of them, or which pupil, actually held the brush.