Portrait of a Prince

The museum's file on this picture is mostly question marks. It dates the canvas somewhere in the 17th century with a query at both ends, says the hand could be Florentine without going further, and never names the young man in the heavily worked clothes. What the file does hold is an address. The villa inventories of 1836 and 1860 list the painting at Poggio Imperiale, the hillside residence just south of Florence that Grand Duchess Maria Maddalena of Austria bought in 1618 and rebuilt, and which was renamed in 1624 for the imperial family she came from. The canvas still carries its number from that house, 388, written in red on the back, and the record notes the paint is slightly abraded.