Giclee print edition of 100 on archival Hahnemühle Photo Rag paper

40 x 40 cm

(Frame not included, but click here to see an affordable frame you can order online.)

I first met Daniel Sharman in the gardens of the Villa Borghese in Rome. He walked towards us as we emerged from the Villa, a vision as beautiful as the Bernini sculptures therein, which actress Sarah Parish and I had just been gazing at in wonder.

Sarah and Dan were both in Rome filming the Netflix series Medici together, Dan playing Lorenzo de' Medici, who was born into the powerful banking family that ruled Florence and one of the Renaissance's greatest figures, and Sarah his mother, Lucrezia.

Lorenzo 'The Magnificent' was the proto 'renaissance man' - a masterful politician and diplomat and also a great patron of the arts, rubbing shoulders with da Vinci, Botticelli and Michelangelo. He was also an accomplished poet in his own right. The tondo was a format exploited to great effect during varying stages of the Italian Renaissance. In 15th Century Florentine high society, there is perhaps no greater use of the tondo than the commemorative birth tray celebrating the birth of Lorenzo de Medici (1449-92). It was therefore irresistibly apt to paint Dan in character as ‘Il Magnifico’ using one of my tondo panels.

Dan came to my studio for the first sitting straight from football practice, where he had managed to acquire the beginnings of a real shiner, his left eye red and swollen. "Oh Dan," I sighed, as I lit him with strategic chiaroscuro to try and hide his wounds and make him less like he'd just done five rounds with Francesco de' Pazzi.