Portrait of a Dignitary

In August 1530 Florence, worn down by a siege of nearly a year, surrendered to the armies of the pope and the emperor. The commander of its defence was Malatesta Baglione, a soldier for hire from Perugia, and afterwards he was accused of betraying the city. For a long time this panel was thought to be his portrait, and the name still follows it around. The Kunsthistorisches Museum now calls it simply a portrait of a dignitary. One good reason for caution is the date. The museum places the painting in the later 1530s, several years after Baglione died in 1531. What remains certain is the man himself, pushed uncomfortably close to us, his head turned away to one side. The museum describes the picture as swinging between violence and passivity, between tension and melancholy. It has been recorded in the imperial gallery in Vienna since 1772.