Portrait of a Man, formerly called Portrait of Cesare Borgia

For a long time this man went by the name of Cesare Borgia, the son of Pope Alexander VI who carved out a state for himself in central Italy and whom Machiavelli held up as a model for a new prince. The Louvre no longer accepts the identification and calls the picture a portrait of a man, formerly called Cesare Borgia.

The Borgia name does lead to Ferrara. Cesare's sister Lucrezia married Alfonso d'Este, the heir to the duchy, in 1502, and it was at Alfonso's court that Dosso later worked. Cesare himself was killed in a skirmish in Navarre in 1507, however, and the scholars who give this canvas to Dosso usually place it around 1518 to 1520. The Louvre dates it no more closely than the 16th century.

The sitter leans towards us out of a dark room. He wears a black cap and a white shirt with a pale fur thrown over his shoulders, and his hand rests on the hilt of a sword. Behind him a window shows a patch of blue light. In 2017 the portrait was one of the paintings the Louvre lent for the opening of the Louvre Abu Dhabi.