That was a Piedmontese ...

The title 'That was a Piedmontese...' derives from Robert Browning's 1842 dramatic monologue My Last Duchess, in which an aristocratic Duke of Ferrara reveals through commentary on his wife's portrait that he had her killed for insufficiently deferring to his rank. The phrase refers to the fictitious artist Fra Pandolf. Hughes painted this subject in 1862 at the height of the Pre-Raphaelite engagement with contemporary literature. Browning was a particular favorite—his dramatic monologues offered morally complex, richly historical subjects suited to Pre-Raphaelite compositional instincts. The subject invited Hughes to paint the scenario implied by the poem: a Renaissance setting, a portrait within the painting, implied violence beneath an aristocratic surface. The panel support evokes the Renaissance medium the poem references. Tate's collection includes it as a significant example of Pre-Raphaelite literary subject matter.

Oil on panel, the wood support evoking Renaissance panel painting that the poem's setting references. The Pre-Raphaelite technique—white ground, thin glazes, precise detail—suits the historical setting and the allusion to Old Master portraiture.