Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta in preghiera davanti a san Sigismondo

Piero della Francesca painted this on a chapel wall in Rimini and dated it 1451, when Sigismondo Malatesta was near the height of his power. Sigismondo was a gifted soldier for hire and a serious patron of art, and also, by most accounts, ruthless and cruel. Here he kneels in careful profile, hands joined, before his name saint, the royal Sigismund, as if to fix himself in the record as a devout prince. Behind him hang the Malatesta emblems and a round painted view of his own fortress, and two greyhounds rest along the edge. The whole chapel sits inside a church that the architect Alberti was then rebuilding as a kind of Renaissance temple to the family. Eleven years later a furious Pope Pius the Second would publicly damn Sigismondo and burn his effigy in Rome.