How did this wonderful chessman end up on a remote island in the Scottish Hebrides, hidden away and buried?
The King is hunched forward, sword on his knee and eyes wide open as he listens—to what?
Could this be young Cicero?
This fresco was painted around 1464, directly onto the wet plaster walls of the Medici banking family’s palatial Milan headquarters. It adorned their courtyard for 400 years before being rescued during the building’s demolition.
Historians believe the child represents the great Roman writer and orator Marcus Tullius Cicero. The most compelling evidence rests on the back of the bench, where the curious inscription “M. T. Ce Ciro” is etched. However, a few scholars suspect the figure might actually be a Renaissance schoolboy reading Cicero, which would shift the painting’s meaning from a historical portrait into a celebration of humanism and education.
What do you think? Is Italian artist Vincenzo Foppa imagining what the legendary yet ill-fated statesman was like as a child?