Portrait of Ainolfo de' Bardi

An inscription on the back of this canvas records that Dolci was 16 when he painted it, in 1632, which makes it one of his earliest known works. The sitter, Ainolfo de' Bardi, wears the eight-pointed cross of a Knight of Malta and the fine dress of a Medici chamberlain, a man who worked directly for the Grand Duke of Tuscany. Behind him the ground opens onto a stretch of countryside where small figures are out hunting. His father, Giovanni de' Bardi, had hosted the Camerata, the circle of Florentine noblemen whose experiments with music set to poetry in the 1570s and 1580s helped bring opera into being.