Retrato de un joven

For most of its life nobody was sure who painted this. Only in 2006 did the scholar Antonio Natali identify it as an early work by Rosso Fiorentino himself, made around 1517 when the Florentine was still in his early twenties and years before the strange, jarring altarpieces that would make his name. Who the young man is stays open too. He was once thought to be Rosso's own reflection, though others tie the picture to the artist's time in the little coastal state of Piombino and name its ruler, Iacopo Appiani. Either way, the sitter turns to meet you with a cool, almost contemptuous look, set against a distant landscape. It hangs today in the Gemaeldegalerie in Berlin.