Portrait of a man

By 1490 Leonardo da Vinci had been living in Milan for several years, working for the Sforza dukes, and a circle of local painters was learning to see faces the way he did. Bernardino de' Conti belonged to that circle. This portrait of an unnamed man comes out of it, a sober, closely watched face turned slightly against a plain dark ground, so nothing competes with the features. We do not know who the sitter was, which was ordinary for these Lombard portraits of private citizens rather than princes. What survives is the manner Bernardino picked up in that city, the soft modelling of cheek and jaw that the painters around Leonardo made the fashion of Milan in those years.