Portrait of Guidobaldo II della Rovere

An inscription on the red cloth of the table says the sitter was in his eighteenth year, which pins the painting to a stretch between the spring of 1531 and the spring of 1532. Bronzino was at Pesaro in those years, working for the della Rovere at their court, far from Florence. The young man in damascened armour is Guidobaldo della Rovere, who would not become Duke of Urbino for another seven years. His helmet sits on the table beside him, carrying a Greek motto that was added to the picture later, and a dog presses against his side. For a long time the Palatine Gallery catalogued the panel as a portrait of Ippolito de' Medici painted by Pontormo, and it took 19th-century scholarship to give both the face and the hand their present names. The initials D.G.B., for Duca Guido Baldo, are on the back of the panel.