Francesco Salviati – Portrait of a Young Man (79 × 59,5 cm). A half-length portrait of a man in three-quarter view set against a severe architectural niche with pilasters. The sitter turns to the left and looks toward the viewer; he wears a black doublet and a beret, with a white shirt whose fine lace glints along the breaks of the collar. His right hand rests on a carved finial (the back of a chair or a cane), serving as a status accent. Soft side lighting models the “mask” of the face and the hand, revealing the velvety beard and the glossy folds of the sleeve; the handling is smooth, almost enamel-like, with subtle nuances of black. A restrained palette of gray-olive and ocher tones underscores the sitter’s dignity and inward composure. Compositional balance and a somewhat dry contour line align the work with the courtly portrait manner of the mid-sixteenth century in Northern Italy (the Florentine-Emilian/Cremonese circle), which prized a statuesque bearing and psychological restraint without superfluous attributes.

A technical analysis by Professor Manfred Schreiner notes a pigment composition typical of the sixteenth century: lead white in the whites, vermilion in the flesh tones, earth pigments in the gray-green background, and carbon black in the dark details. The conclusion is that the painting was executed between 1550 and 1600. Dr. Pierluigi Carofano assigns the portrait to Francesco Salviati and his workshop, dating it to around 1550 (a view shared by Professor Emilio Negro). The work is virtually identical to Salviati’s famous portrait in Capodimonte: the dimensions, composition, pose, and color scheme coincide; only the support differs (panel in the original, canvas here). Several autograph sixteenth-century copies are known, confirming the popularity of this portrait.

Francesco Salviati was one of the leading Florentine painters of the Mannerist period. A pupil of Andrea del Sarto, he worked on the decoration of the Palazzo Vecchio. His compositions circulated widely through prints, and he was among the first members of the Accademia del Disegno established under Cosimo I in Florence.

Size: 79 × 59,5 cm.