Gazing out from a magnificent circular bronze tondo with an intensity that has unnerved viewers for five centuries, the self-portrait bust of Andrea Mantegna — Renaissance painter, engraver, and one of the towering geniuses of Italian art — commands this sepia postcard from the Church of Sant'Andrea in Mantua, where it has hung in the artist's own funerary chapel since his death in 1506. Mantegna designed the chapel himself, and this haunting bronze medallion, surrounded by a richly decorated rinceaux border of scrolling foliage, is considered one of the most psychologically penetrating self-portraits of the entire Renaissance. The photograph, taken by A. Premi for the Mantua publisher Pelloni Claudio, captures every nuance of the cast surface — the deeply furrowed brow, the disheveled hair, the unflinching gaze of a man who knew precisely how posterity would judge him. For collectors of Italian art history, Renaissance monuments, or Mantua topographica, this is an unusually distinguished subject.