Italian

A young soldier lies dead in a barren landscape, the sky growing dark around him. A deathly pallor tinges his face and his left hand rests on the hilt of his sword, as if to protect it. His bony, oversized right hand, the colour of decaying flesh, lies prominently on his chest. The man’s armour g...

A young woman leans on the hilt of a sword and there is what appears to be a fragment of a wheel next to her shoulder. She is probably Saint Catherine of Alexandria, the fourth-century martyr who was tortured by being bound to a wheel studded with iron spikes and later beheaded.We don’t know who...

This portrait of an unknown husband and wife is unusually intimate. The costumes have been dated to the mid-1540s. It was rare at the time for a man to be depicted with his hand resting on his wife’s shoulder. It was also slightly unusual for a woman to be shown on her husband’s right-hand side,...

In this small, oval-shaped portrait, an unidentified man turns his head slightly towards the viewer and looks directly out of the picture. A white shirt collar emerges from beneath his sober black jacket, which has small buttons running down the front. The reverse of the painting is inscribed wit...

This portrait bust of the Italian Renaissance artist Andrea Mantegna (1431–1506) was made around 1880, and presented to the National Gallery three years later by the British collector Henry Vaughan.The bust is made of plaster of Paris with a ‘bronzed’ finish. It is one of an edition of casts that...

This Carrara marble portrait bust of a bearded man wearing neoclassical military costume is chiselled on the reverse: ‘LEONARDUS RINALDIUS/ A. VICTORIA. F/ MDXXXXVI’ (‘Leonardo Rinaldi / A. [presumably Alessandro] Vittoria F/ 1546’). However, the bust is not in the style of Alessandro Vittoria (1...

This picture looks like an Italian Renaissance portrait but is in fact a forgery made in the early twentieth century. It includes elements found in the originals, such as the stone window opening onto a view of the Italian countryside and the view of figures in profile.It was purchased in 1923 as...

This unknown lady stands beside a table covered with an expensive Ottoman carpet on which her small dog is lying. Her hands rest affectionately on the little dog’s back, while its paw lies on the inside of her arm. Dogs were often included in portraits to symbolise the sitter’s faithfulness, whic...

This portrait was once thought to be of Elisa Bonaparte (1777–1820), a younger sister of Napoleon Bonaparte. However, the young woman has not yet been identified. At one time attributed to Jacques-Louis David, the portrait has been claimed to be both French and Italian – the hills in the backgrou...

This elegant young man is dressed in an expensive black coat lined with lynx fur and a fine linen shirt embroidered in white around the neckline with delicate scrolling patterns. It is not possible to make out the emblem on his signet ring, which might have given us a clue to his identity. The co...

This portrait was bequeathed to the National Gallery as a work by the fifteenth-century Florentine painter Pietro Pollaiuolo; its former owners were unaware that it is in fact a nineteenth-century forgery.Whoever painted it was clearly trying to imitate fifteenth-century Florentine portraiture; i...

We do not know the identity of the man in this very damaged portrait. His clothes are typical of Venice and suggest a date in the early sixteenth century. He is shown three-quarter length, facing the left, his hand holding the stola (cloth sash) draped over his shoulder. His sleeve is lined with...

A young man wearing only an animal skin is illuminated against a dark rock, leaning forward to drink water trickling from a spring. With one hand he props himself up on the rock and with the other he holds a reed cross – an attribute which identifies him as Saint John the Baptist, the desert herm...

The dead Christ, wearing the crown of thorns and displaying his wounds from the Crucifixion, is supported by two angels. One of them gazes at him while the other looks at us for our response. The figures fill the entire image, focusing our whole attention on the body of Christ, his wounds and his...

Salome’s mother Herodias persuaded her to ask King Herod for the head of John the Baptist as a reward for her dancing (Matthew 14: 1–12). Herodias held a grudge against the Baptist for saying that her marriage to Herod was unlawful. The saint was beheaded and his head was then presented to Salome...

In this painting, probably made for private devotion, the infant Christ stands on the Virgin Mary’s lap and reaches up to embrace her. With his right hand he points up at her face. Saint Joseph looks on at the right, his hands crossed over his chest in reverence. In one hand he appears to hold a...