Male Portrait in profile

Distinguished by colours as brilliant as glazes and lines incised with the precision of coral or hard stone, the painting was traditionally attributed to the Ferrara court portraitist Baldassarre d'Este, but more recently to antonio Leonelli da Crevalcore (documented c. 1450-1525).
The sharp male profile is almost constrained within the marble prespective framing; the miniaturist descriptive precision on the whole is remarkable, along with the singular port view, immersed in dazzling brightness, which the elegant drawn courtain lets us admire from an elevated point of view. A prayer book placed on the window sill in the foreground with studied trome-l'oeil effect has a ring and pearl on top. These allude to marriage and suggest that the painting was the right section of a matrimonial diptych.