Portrait of Lorenzo di Credi

Pietro Perugino

National Gallery of Art

Shown from the chest up, a pale-skinned man with a narrow face looks at us from in front of a distant landscape in this vertical portrait painting. His body and face are angled to our left, so he looks at us from the corners of his brown eyes. He has dark, low brows, a straight nose, high cheekbones, and his rose-pink lips turn slightly down at the corners. Chestnut-brown waves fall over his ears and down the back of his neck from under a tall, brimless, rounded, black cap. His black robe has a high neck lined with a white undergarment. Far behind him, a grassy hill leads up to steep, rocky outcroppings, with those to our right dotted with trees. The land rolls into the distance to meet mountains, hazy blue along the horizon, which comes halfway up this composition. The clear sky above deepens from pale blue along the mountains to slate blue across the top.