フランチェスコ・デステの肖像

Francesco d'Este was an Italian nobleman's son who spent his life in the wrong country. His father, Leonello d'Este, ruled Ferrara in northern Italy, but Francesco was illegitimate, and as a boy he was sent north to be raised at the glittering court of Burgundy. That is where van der Weyden painted him, in the Flemish style rather than the Italian one he was born to. He holds two small objects, a hammer and a ring, most likely prizes won at a tournament, though no one now is certain what they meant. Behind him there is nothing at all, a bare white ground, rare in portraits of this age, which may nod to the white of his family's colors. The ring lay hidden under old varnish and only reappeared when the panel was cleaned in 1934.