Portrait of a Young Man in Black

A young man in a black cap and black coat looks out at you, a book in one hand and a rolled sheet in the other, the tools of someone who worked with words, perhaps a scholar or a secretary. Who he was is unknown. For a long time the portrait was given to Domenico Puligo, a capable Florentine painter of the early 16th century. Then Antonio Natali, a director of the Uffizi, argued that it was really an early work by Rosso Fiorentino, one of the boldest of the Florentine Mannerists, painted around 1520. The two names are still weighed against each other today.