Ercole de' Roberti

Roberti, Ercole d'Antonio de'
Ercole da Ferrara

Ferrarese, c. 1455/1456 - 1496

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Italian Renaissance painter (1450-1496)

Explore Selected Works

Ercole de' Roberti, The Wife of Hasdrubal and Her Children, c. 1490/1493, tempera on poplar panel, Ailsa Mellon Bruce Fund, 1965.7.1

The Wife of Hasdrubal and Her Children

Ercole de' Roberti · c. 1490/1493 · tempera on poplar panel ·  Accession ID  1965.7.1

Shown from the waist up, a pale-skinned woman wearing a jeweled dress faces our left in profile in this vertical portrait painting. She looks into the distance with the light brown eye we can see, under a faint, arched brow. She has a petite nose, smooth, lightly flushed cheeks, and her peach-colored lips are closed. Her rust-brown gown is trimmed with wide, mustard-yellow panels studded with pearls, rubies, and sapphires along the front of the bodice and down the sleeve we can see. The elbow of that sleeve, near the bottom edge of the painting, is gathered in intricate, narrow pleats. White fabric billows out from the seam where the sleeve meets her shoulder, and a wide scarlet-red belt bordered with pearls wraps around her waist. Her blond hair is pulled back and coiled into a horn over her ear. Her head is covered with a translucent white veil that falls in deep folds to her shoulder. Another sheer veil layered over the first sweeps down over the high hairline of her forehead. A double strand of white pearls encircles her neck above the white collar of her gown. A marine-blue cloth with an olive-green lining nearly fills the background beyond her, but a sliver of a landscape view can be seen along the left edge of the composition. The window opens onto a town with coral-red city walls in front of blue and gray buildings. Hazy blue mountains line the horizon in the deep distance, and the sky above deepens from pale, ice blue over the mountains to topaz blue across the top.
Ercole de' Roberti, Ginevra Bentivoglio, c. 1474/1477, tempera on poplar panel, Samuel H. Kress Collection, 1939.1.220

Ginevra Bentivoglio

Ercole de' Roberti · c. 1474/1477 · tempera on poplar panel ·  Accession ID  1939.1.220

The head and chest of a clean-shaven, pale-skinned man is shown in profile facing our right, in front of a curtain opening onto a sliver of a distant landscape in this vertical portrait painting. The man’s eye we can see is hazel under a thin brow, and he has a straight nose over a closed, peach-colored mouth. A crease running from the side of his nose to the corner of his mouth is lightly shaded, and his cheek flushes light pink. His straight, auburn-brown hair is cut to angle from his brow down to his neck. He wears a tall scarlet-red cap and a brown and gold tunic pleated in vertical folds down the front. The tunic is patterned with stylized leaves and vines in gold against the brown background. The neckline is lined with smoke gray, and the high neck of a garment beneath is patterned with gray leaves against brick red. The marine-blue, nearly black, cloth behind him covers most of the background. A narrow view along the right edge of the composition opens onto a landscape with the ruins of a terracotta-colored gate and city wall closer to us, though still deep in the distance. Even farther back is a walled town with gray and pale peach towers and crenellated walls. Spires are silhouetted against azure-blue mountains, hazy along the horizon in the distance, under a pale, ice-blue sky.
Ercole de' Roberti, Giovanni II Bentivoglio, c. 1474/1477, tempera on poplar panel, Samuel H. Kress Collection, 1939.1.219

Giovanni II Bentivoglio

Ercole de' Roberti · c. 1474/1477 · tempera on poplar panel ·  Accession ID  1939.1.219

Bibliography

1941

  • Ortolani, Sergio. Cosmé Tura, Francesco del Cossa, Ercole de' Roberti. Milan, 1941: 139-203.

1956

  • Longhi, Roberto. Officina ferrarese (1934), seguíta dagli Ampliamenti (1940) e dai Nuovi ampliamenti (1940-1955). Florence, 1956: 36-47, 127-137, 180-182.

1959

  • Ruhmer, Eberhard. "Ercole de' Roberti." Encyclopedia of World Art. 17+ vols. London, 1959+: 12(1966):224-230.

1960

  • Salmi, Mario. Ercole de' Roberti. Milan, 1960.

1986

  • Manca, Joseph. "Ercole de' Roberti's Garganelli Chapel Frescoes: A Reconstruction and Analysis." Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte 49 (1986): 147-164.

1992

  • Manca, Joseph. The Art of Ercole de' Roberti. Cambridge and New York, 1992.

1995

  • Molteni, Monica. Ercole de' Roberti. Milan, 1995.

1999

  • Allen, Denise, and Luke Syson, with contributions from Jennifer Helvey and David Jaffé. Ercole de' Roberti: The Renaissance in Ferrara. London, 1999 (also published as a supplement to The Burlington Magazine 141, April 1999).

2003

  • Boskovits, Miklós, and David Alan Brown, et al. Italian Paintings of the Fifteenth Century. The Systematic Catalogue of the National Gallery of Art. Washington, D.C., 2003: 601-602.