Portrait of Count Alberico II.

Bernardino de' Conti's Portrait of Count Alberico II, painted around 1518 and now at the Gemäldegalerie Berlin, is a work by a Milanese portrait painter who served the Sforza court and its associates. De' Conti was one of the principal portrait painters of Lombardy in the early sixteenth century, producing effigies of court nobles and officials in the Milanese tradition that absorbed the influence of Leonardo da Vinci's revolutionary approach to portrait psychology. The portrait of a count documents the aristocratic patronage that sustained Milanese painting during the turbulent decades following the French invasion of 1499, when the Sforza were displaced and then restored.

Milanese portrait conventions after Leonardo produce a three-quarter pose with careful attention to the psychological presence of the sitter. De' Conti's handling of flesh tones shows the influence of Leonardesque sfumato, softening the transitions between light and shadow in the face.