
The Lady with the Ermine
1490 · Czartoryski Museum, Krakow
Cecilia Gallerani turns as if someone has come in, and the ermine turns with her. It was her patron's emblem and a pun on her name.
★ 8.2

Cecilia Gallerani turns as if someone has come in, and the ermine turns with her. It was her patron's emblem and a pun on her name.

The old man's nose is swollen and ruined by disease, and the boy looks up at him without noticing it at all.

She had been dead for years when this was painted, and the asp at her throat turns her into Cleopatra.

The whole panel is a giant eye, with Christ in the pupil and the words Beware, beware, God sees. It was made for a tabletop.

The head arrives on a platter inside a serene sunlit loggia full of well-dressed Florentines, many of them the family who paid.