Pisanello, Ritratto di Leonello d'Este (1441) -- Accademia Carrara, Bergamo

Speranza


The standard formula for a portrait was the profile, the simplest and most efficacious way of recording a person's features.

What we would call individual traits are confined to the shape of the nose, the ear, and the cut of the hair.

In Pisanello's portrait of Lionello d'Este, the Marchese di Ferrara, painted in 1441, the sitter has the appreance of a rare butterfly specimenn that has been carefully pressed and mounted to show its distinguishing traits to best advantage.

Lionello's sloping forehead and aquiline nose, his sensuous lips, and large, delicate ear, emphasised by the diagonal slash of his haircut -- are beautifully played against the sumptuous brocade of his jacket and the hedge of roses, both of which serve to distance him from an everyday situation and help create the impression of a sensitive but aloof ruler.