Giovanni II Bentivoglio

Giovanni II Bentivoglio ruled Bologna as signore from 1463 until 1506, and Ercole de' Roberti's portrait of around 1480 — the companion to his portrait of Ginevra — presents the ruler with the directness appropriate to a man wielding effective power. Unlike Ginevra's profile, Giovanni is shown in three-quarter view, a format associated with Flemish portraiture and increasingly adopted in Italian courts for male sitters because it allowed greater psychological engagement between sitter and viewer. Ercole's training in Ferrara — court painter to the Este, closely related to the Bentivoglio through marriage — made him the natural choice for official portraits of this kind. The Kress Collection pendant pair preserves one of the most important surviving examples of fifteenth-century Bolognese court portraiture.

The three-quarter format allows Ercole to give Giovanni a psychological presence impossible in profile. The face is modeled with the same precision applied to Ginevra's portrait, and the costume — typically dark, with minimal ornament for a male ruler — is handled to emphasize the face as the primary vehicle of character and authority.