Giovanni II Bentivoglio by Roberti, Ercole de'

This is Ercole de' Roberti's portrait of Giovanni II Bentivoglio, painted around 1474 and now in the National Gallery of Art in Washington. It is one of two pendant portraits, his wife Ginevra's hangs beside it. Together they are a rare surviving pair of Italian Renaissance marriage portraits from a court that does not exist anymore.

Look at the profile. Roberti borrowed the strict side view from Roman coins and imperial medals, it was a formula for authority, not personality. The brocade robe is rendered with such precision that textile historians can identify the pattern as costly Lucchese silk. Every lozenge is a wealth claim.

The man in the painting governed Bologna for 47 years, but his rule was never secure. His wife Ginevra Sforza was an illegitimate daughter of the Sforza dynasty of Milan, and she was the real political operator. In 1488, when the Malvezzi family conspired to murder Giovanni, Ginevra personally interrogated prisoners and was discovered with a dagger hidden in her sleeve, she was ready to fight for the city herself. The plot was crushed.

The Bentivoglio fell anyway. In 1506 Pope Julius II marched on Bologna, the family fled, and the city was absorbed into the Papal States. Giovanni died in exile two years later. But before all that, a Ferrarese painter captured a moment of impossible confidence: a red cap, a gold robe, and a man who thought his family would hold power forever.