Retrato de Carlo de' Medici

For centuries Italian portraits followed the ancient Roman coin, showing the sitter in strict profile. This one turns to face us. Andrea Mantegna painted the head at a three-quarter angle, so the eyes almost meet ours, a way of seeing that had only just arrived in Italy from Flemish painters in the north. The man is believed to be Carlo de' Medici, an illegitimate son of Cosimo the Elder, ruler of Florence, born to a Circassian slave, which some connect to his unusually pale blue eyes. He wears the plain dark dress of a protonotary, a senior papal official, a post he held from 1463. Mantegna gives him no gold and no background, just a blunt, unsmiling face studied like a piece of carved stone.