Attributed to Scipione Pulzone

In late 16th-century Rome, a portrait by Scipione Pulzone, the painter from Gaeta, was something collectors wanted to own even when the sitter was no relation of theirs. His workshop met that demand by repeating likenesses of popes, cardinals and members of the Medici family, the rulers of Tuscany, closely following his exact, finely detailed manner.

Attributed to Scipione Pulzone is the label a museum uses when it believes a picture is his but cannot prove it. With him the doubt usually lies between the master and his own studio. Scholars test such cases against his signed works, among them a portrait of Cardinal Granvelle, the Habsburg statesman, now at the Courtauld Gallery in London and inscribed as made by Scipione of Gaeta in 1576.