A case of Horton's disease (with its potential neurological symptoms) depicted in a portrait by Andrea Mantegna

The painting “Portrait of a Man in Profile” (Fig. 1), attributed to the painter Andrea Mantegna (1431–1506) is part of the “Poldi Pezzoli” Museum (Milan). It shows an aged man in a lateral pose whose extremely realistically depicted traits immediately capture the onlooker’s attention. In particular, the windy turgidity of the temporal artery may suggest that the subject suffered from Horton's disease (also known as giant-cell arteritis), a condition which typically affects patients over 50, principally causing neurological symptoms such as headache as well as being associated to systemic symptoms such as fever and discomfort, polymyalgia rheumatica, visual loss—more specifically blindness—being its most severe complication [1].