Portrait of a man

The back of this small panel once carried an inscription naming it a self-portrait, and for a long time that is how the Uffizi listed it. Later scholars set the face beside Parmigianino's securely identified likenesses, including the famous one he painted gazing into a barber's convex mirror, and the features simply do not agree. The old title was quietly dropped. Some now propose the sitter is Bonifacio Gozzadini, a count Parmigianino worked for in Bologna around 1530. Others go no further than an unknown Bolognese gentleman. Three old copies of the same man survive, in Naples, Rome and Parma, and the Parma one carries a date that helps place the original near 1530.