Ritratto di giovane seduto su un tappeto

Nobody knows who this young man is, but he plainly expects to be looked at. Rosso Fiorentino, a Florentine working in the loose, nervy manner later called Mannerism, painted him around 1525 lounging on a rich oriental carpet beside a grand mantelpiece, a small image of the Virgin on the wall behind him. The pose is startlingly casual for its century, closer to how someone might sprawl for a photograph than to the stiff dignity of most Renaissance portraits. The picture was never quite finished. Look at the hands and you can still see the paint moving in quick, unresolved strokes. For a long stretch it hung under the wrong name, credited to Titian, until scholars gave it back to Rosso.