It is not often realised that pictures of this type represent a new informality in Renaissance portraiture. There was a tendency in the 1540s to abandon the relatively rigid formality favoured by Raphael (1483-1520) and his followers and to go for what in modern terms would be described as a more casual approach.   Even the sitter’s status tends to be underplayed, thus making the individuals represented in portraits of this type impossible to identify unless there is some historical or documentary evidence. A rather similar painting of a youth in the Museo Poldi-Pezzoli in Milan has been tentatively, but probably wrongly, associated with Cosimo I de’Medici as a youth. The Milan painting, however, almost certainly shows the same sitter. On stylistic grounds, this picture should be associated with the artist’s Florentine period c1543-48.  A further and rather similar Portrait of a youth with a provenance from the Medici family was sold in Milan 20th-25th March, 1934, lot 156, pl. VIII, also with an attribution to Salviati.

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