Portrait of a Notable (or Gerolamo Casio)

Around 1500 Boltraffio left Milan for Bologna, where a well-connected family named Casio began handing him commissions, and this portrait comes out of those years. For a long time the sitter was called Girolamo Casio, the poet in that family and a friend of the painter. The identification is not secure. He wears the dark hat and plain dark coat of a man of standing, the sort of dress a magistrate or man of law would wear, and there is little here to tie him to poetry rather than the courts. One clue sits on the lapel: the letters CB, whose meaning no one has explained. The face is turned nearly in profile, modelled with the soft, careful light Boltraffio had learned in Milan, though by now he was working in his own manner rather than copying his teacher. It was only in the 19th century that the panel was given back to his hand. He kept the background bare and dark, so nothing competes with the man's steady, slightly downturned look.