Bildnis Cosimos des Älteren

Cosimo de' Medici, the banker who first made his family masters of Florence, had been dead more than 50 years when Pontormo painted this. The commission came around 1519, at a frightening moment for the dynasty. The young duke meant to carry on the main Medici line had just died with no legitimate heir, and the family's grip on Florence suddenly looked fragile. Reviving the face of their great founder was a way of insisting the house would endure. Behind him a laurel branch has been cut, yet sends out a fresh green shoot, wrapped with a line from Virgil, 'though one is torn away, another does not fail.' That same summer a boy was born in the junior branch of the family who would grow up to rule Florence as Duke Cosimo the First.