The Wife of Hasdrubal and Her Childrenc. 1490/1493

A woman holds the hands of two nude children in front of a crimson-red cloth in this vertical painting. All three have pale skin and brown hair. The woman wears a forest-green dress with voluminous sleeves and a gauzy white headdress that wraps around her hair and is fastened with a band across her forehead. She stands crouching with one foot extended slightly forward in a sandal, surrounded by broken chunks of masonry and bits of burning logs. Her body faces us but she turns her head to the right. Her mouth is wide open, and her eyes cut back to our left. The woman clutches the children’s hands in both of her own. The child to our left turns away from us and reaches one hand up to touch the back of the woman’s hand. The child on the right twists away from the woman, eyes squinted up and to the right and mouth open. Behind them, fold lines create a grid across the red cloth. Slivers of grass and blue sky line each side of the composition.

Description from the National Gallery of Art.

Ercole de' Roberti painted this in about 1490/1493, aged about 35. It is now at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC.

How it was made

Tempera

Pigment bound with egg yolk. It dries in minutes and can’t be blended wet, so painters built up form with fine, hatched strokes. It was Europe’s main panel technique before oil.