Arts and Arms

#78011     76 X 102 cm     ac

• Andrea del Castagno: “Portrait of a Man”, Mellon Collection,
• National Gallery of Art, Washington D. C.

A human truth: a change in clothing changes the man.
The young man on the left: a scholar at a medieval university. Blue skies. On the right, the very same man, but with a steel helmet and a rifle. Bloody skies. Same eyes, same nose, same mouth, but who can deny that they have become two different men?After the battle of Anghieri, Andrea del Castagno (1421-1457), a Medici protege, painted effigies of the hanged rebels. Perhaps because he was familiar with war, a great deal of his subsequent production went into church frescos until he was carried off prematurely by the plague. Would he be pleased to see his young man in a German uniform? The scholar’s robes are better.

– Lawrance Jeppson