The first person we encounter on entering the intriguingly titled “Hidden Faces: Covered Portraits of the Renaissance,” in the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Lehman Wing, is well-known to anyone who frequents the museum and probably memorable to occasional visitors as well.¹ His face is not hidden. Quite the contrary, we are confronted by the grave expression, narrow visage, and elegantly arched nose of Francesco d’Este, the illegitimate son and designated successor of Lionello d’Este, the fifteenth-century marquess of Ferrara, Modena, and Reggio Emilia. Francesco was painted about 1460 by the Netherlandish painter Rogier van der Weyden and his workshop, when the elegant young man was receiving military training at the Burgundian court of Philip the Good.

Long one of the pleasures of the Met’s Northern Renaissance galleries, the portrait of the Italian aristocrat reminds us of the complex relationship between Northern and Southern Europe in the Quattrocento, when the Low Countries had a considerable population of Florentine bankers and wool merchants. These expatriates were attracted to the meticulous detail and glowing color in the works of such local masters as Rogier, Hugo van der Goes, and Hans Memling, commissioning paintings from them and sometimes even sending them to Italy. Northern artists occasionally immigrated to Italy, too, while Italian painters, at times, strove to equal the acute clarity of Northern portraits, evidence of rich cross-fertilization. We can, as we usually do, study Francesco’s distinctive features, puzzle at the pairing of the hammer and the ring that he holds