Portrait d'un hallebardier, Francesco Guardi ?

In 1529 an imperial army was tightening its ring around Florence, and the last republic the city would ever have was calling up its young men to man the walls. That is roughly when Pontormo painted this boy, standing before a fortress wall with a halberd, a long spear-and-axe, resting against his shoulder. His face is unlined, barely past childhood, and the pink and white of his clothes sit oddly against all that talk of war. Vasari later wrote that Pontormo had portrayed a young nobleman named Francesco Guardi as a soldier during the siege, though others have read the sitter as the young Cosimo de' Medici, and the argument has never quite settled. He was perhaps 14 or 15 when he stood for it.