UNKNOWN MASTER, Italian
(active c. 1490 in Emilia)

Portrait of a Man, Portrait of a Woman

c. 1490
Tempera on panel, 52 x 37 cm (each)
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Each panel bears the coat of arms of the Gozzadini family. Members of this family, whose palace was on the Strada Santo Stefano in Bologna, were important patrons of the visual arts by the late fifteenth century and then increasingly so during the sixteenth century. Based on archival information, a possible identification of the sitters could be Matteo di Sebastiano di Bernardino Gozzadini (b. 1473), and his wife Ginevra d'Antonio Lupari (d. 1557).

Formerly the portraits were attributed to Francesco del Cossa or Lorenzo Costa. Presently they are attributed to an anonymous master best known by his frescoes in the Bentivoglio family castle at Ponte Poledrano. The conventional name of this master is Maestro delle Storie del Pane, named after a story represented in the frescoes.