Without Cares or Anxious Thougts

Fra Angelico, "The Sermon on the Mount" - Made between 1440 and 1450, as part of the fresco decoration of the Monastery of St Marco in Florence.

(As recorded by Giorgio Vasari, The Lives of the Painters) "[Fra Angelico] used to say that he who practices the art of painting must have quiet, and should live without cares or anxious thoughts."

Fatal Confinement

Lorenzo Lotto, Portrait of a Man, 1535

From the text in my Guide to the Borghese Gallery, "The melancholy Portrait of a Man by Lorenzo Lotto is probably the portrait of the widower, Mercurio Bua, because of the small skull surrounded by rose petals, reminiscent of a fatal confinement."