Portrait of Cardinal Ippolito de' Medici

Between 1562 and 1565 Cristofano dell'Altissimo delivered 17 painted panels to the Guardaroba generale, the office that ran the furnishings of the Medici household. They were portraits of the family's own dead, ordered so that the dynasty could look at itself in a row. Vasari listed the commission in the 1568 edition of his Lives, and by 1577 the whole set hung in the room of this palace now called the Sala delle Nicchie. Fifteen of them survive.

This one is Ippolito, made a cardinal in January 1529, at 17, by his cousin Pope Clement VII, although what he wanted was a soldier's life. He died at Itri, south of Rome, in August 1535, aged 24, and poison was suspected at the time. He had been dead nearly 30 years when the panel was painted. Cristofano took the face from Titian's portrait of 1533, which is in this same gallery, and the name runs in capitals across the top.