Portrait of a Man in Black

In Florence around 1520 a strict profile was an old-fashioned way to be painted. The format belonged to the century before, to portrait medals and marriage panels, and this elderly man in a black cloak and cap, set flat against an ochre ground with only a white shirt collar showing, was given it deliberately. Who painted him is still argued. The panel ran for a long time under Pontormo's name, until the specialist Falciani reassigned it to Rosso and dated it between about 1520 and 1522, going by the heads in Rosso's Deposition at Volterra. The gallery's own catalogue has taken that up. It has not convinced everyone. The sitter has been fought over as well. In 1910 he was proposed as a Florentine canon, and the idea was dropped because he wears no churchman's dress. On the back of the panel someone once wrote 84.