Most visitors to Venice throughout the centuries have been captivated, but not usually in the way one poor fellow was when he visited in the early 14th century. His name was, if I’m reading the inscription correctly, Cesar(e) C(G)orcella, and he was put in prison long enough to carve this profile portrait of a bearded gentleman he labeled ‘Francesco Sforsa’ (who could not have been Francesco Sforza I of Milan if the date is correct). Cesare seems to have been a very good artist, if the relief he carved is any indication, with its elegant, curving vine. Who knows what fate Cesar met after he crossed the Bridge of Sighs and found himself in this medieval Venetian dungeon? He likely died there, yet millions of tourists a year see and appreciate his little carving, seven hundred years after he passed his time in his cell with a little piece of metal he was able to sharpen. And through photography and the internet, tens of millions more can see what is likely the only work he did that survives: his most modest and his last.