Lucrezia Borgia

So I like to read Wikipedia, or rather, fall into black holes of reading connected entries on a tangent so that I lose time... "researching."  The Borgias were one such tangent, maybe because the show was coming out? (I started this that long ago)  Maybe not... Lucrezia is much maligned by history.  She may have been a cold temptress, she was definitely the bastard daughter of Pope Alexander VI (scandalous!), and her story is interesting either way. More on her here: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucrezia… That period in Italian history is one of my favorites, too. 

This is Lucrezia imagined as a misfit Disney princess, a la Rapunzel.  I really wanted to paint gold hair with a crazy rim light and jello demon fairy things.  She has a companion piece, Joan the Mad, who may be done... some day. XD

This is based (kinda) on the only known painting of her as St. Catherine of Alexandria in a fresco by Pinturicchio, in the Sala dei Santi the Borgia apartments in the Vatican c. 1494: commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fil…

Photoshop CS5 with Wacom Intuos 4
Spread out over a year...  Maybe like 3 weeks total?
Image © J. Oyhenart-Ball, 2014