Bronzino's Portrait of a Young Man was painted in Florence in the 1530s, in oil on wood panel, and measures about 96 by 75 cm (37 5/8 by 29 1/2 inches). It reached the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York in 1929 as part of the bequest of Mrs. H. O. Havemeyer. Nobody knows who the sitter was, and the portrait has become famous for the way it manages to be both beautiful and slightly unsettling.
A very composed young man
He stands turned three-quarters, one hand resting a small book on a carved pedestal, the other hand planted on his hip with a ring on one finger. A black cap sits on his pale hair, a blue-green sash is knotted at his waist, and his dark doublet is cut and raised into rows of small slashes. His expression is cool and a little distant. The Met's commentary describes him as an arrogant young man and suggests that he belonged to Bronzino's close circle of literary friends in Florence, probably holding a book of poetry.
Look for the masks
The surprise is in the furniture. Bronzino used grotesques, the fantastical faces and ornaments that Renaissance artists revived from ancient Roman decoration, for the carved head on the pedestal and the carved head on the arm of the chair. A third, almost hidden mask-like face is suggested in the folds of the young man's breeches. The museum's reading is that these monstrous faces contrast with his handsome features, and may also hint that his carefully constructed appearance is itself a kind of mask.
Little-known facts
- The identity of the sitter is still unknown; the book is the only real clue the painting offers.
- Bronzino was born in 1503 outside Florence and was a student of the painter Pontormo; he later became the court portraitist to Cosimo I de' Medici.
- The cool, polished surface and the elongated, elegant pose are typical of Florentine Mannerism, where grace and artifice mattered more than natural informality.
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