Jacopo da Pontormo, Portrait of a Young Man in a Red Cap (Carlo Neroni?), ca. 1539–40. Oil on panel, 36 1/4 × 29 inches (92.1 × 73.7 cm). Photo Courtesy of Shepherd Conservation, London
Jacopo da Pontormo’s striking Portrait of a Young Man in a Red Cap (ca. 1539–40) presents the likeness of an elegant youth whose identity is not yet securely established in modern scholarship. Nevertheless, through his appearance, Pontormo’s picture makes clear the young man’s Florentine identity. He stands with one arm akimbo, his left hand resting upon his hip near the pommel of his sword, dark eyes partly shadowed beneath a furrowed brow. He twists to gaze over his left shoulder, and in his dynamic pose and bold expression, this young man recalls famous Florentine depictions of David—the biblical hero who, though only a youth, defeated in battle the cruel giant Goliath. David was hailed in Renaissance Florence as an emblem of the city and its defenders. Pontormo’s young maninvokes this legacy by echoing the posture of two of the most celebrated fifteenth-century statues of the victorious David, by Donatello and Andrea del Verrocchio (both now in Florence’s Bargello Museum). The deep lines between the sitter’s brows and slight grimace tugging at his handsome features also seem intended to connect Pontormo’s subjectwith the combative expression of a third famous image of David: Michelangelo’s heroic masterpiece, today in the Galleria dell’Accademia, Florence.
In the early sixteenth century, these David statues carried a strong partisan symbolism, associated with the Florentine republicans who opposed the Medici family’s dynastic rule. Pontormo employed this context to splendid effect in his Portrait of a Halberdier (Getty Museum, Los Angeles), painted during the brutal siege of Florence in 1529–30. The halberdieris a young soldier named Francesco Guardi who fought to defend the Florentine Republic against the Medicean invasion. In his portrait, Guardi adopts a stance very similar to that seen in the Portrait of a Young Man in a Red Cap. Indeed, the two pictures are extremely alike: painted upon panels of almost exactly the same size, with their figures’ pose and scale so close that they must surely have arisen from a single idea or template. Moreover, in his Lives of the Artists, Giorgio Vasari links Pontormo’s Portrait of a Halberdier with a portrait of Carlo di Francesco Maria di Dietisalvi Neroni, a fellow Florentine and republican ally. For this reason, the Portrait of a Young Man in a Red Cap has been, since its rediscovery in 2008, generally identified as Neroni.
Neroni was married twice—first to Caterina Capponi in 1530, and later to Elisabetta Martelli in 1540—and the ring that the sitter wears on his left hand and the slip of paper he carries in his right suggest that Portrait of a Young Man in a Red Cap was carried out in connection with one of these matrimonial events. But the polished brushwork and refined energy are very different from the exuberant handling and brilliant use of color in the Portrait of a Halberdier from 1530, suggesting that a dating of around 1540 is the more likely.
References
Damen, Giada, and Davide Gasparotto. “Portrait of a Young Man in a Red Cap (Carlo Neroni).” In Miraculous Encounters: Pontormo from Drawing to Painting, edited by Bruce L. Edelstein and Davide Gasparotto, 130–33. Florence: Palazzo Pitti; New York: Morgan Library and Museum; Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2018.
Plazzotta, Carol. “Portrait of a Young Man in a Red Cap (Carlo Neroni).” In Renaissance Faces: Van Eyck to Titian, edited by Lorne Campbell, 224–27. London: National Gallery, 2008–9.
Russell, Francis. “A Portrait of a Young Man in Black by Pontormo.” Burlington Magazine 150, no. 1267 (October 2008): 675–77.
Siemon, Julia. “Bronzino, Politics and Portraiture in 1530s Florence,” 155–89. PhD diss., Columbia University, 2015.
Siemon, Julia. “Portrait of a Young Man in a Red Cap (Carlo Neroni?).” In The Medici: Portraits and Politics, 1512–1570, edited by Keith Christiansen and Carlo Falciani, 182–84. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2021.
Vasari, Giorgio. Le vite de’ più eccellenti pittori, scultori ed architettori (1568), edited by Gaetano Milanesi, 6:275. Florence: G. C. Sansoni, 1881.
Jacopo da Pontormo’s striking Portrait of a Young Man in a Red Cap (ca. 1539–40) presents the likeness of an elegant youth whose identity is not yet securely established in modern scholarship. Nevertheless, through his appearance, Pontormo’s picture makes clear the young man’s Florentine identity. He stands with one arm akimbo, his left hand resting upon his hip near the pommel of his sword, dark eyes partly shadowed beneath a furrowed brow. He twists to gaze over his left shoulder, and in his dynamic pose and bold expression, this young man recalls famous Florentine depictions of David—the biblical hero who, though only a youth, defeated in battle the cruel giant Goliath. David was hailed in Renaissance Florence as an emblem of the city and its defenders. Pontormo’s young man invokes this legacy by echoing the posture of two of the most celebrated fifteenth-century statues of the victorious David, by Donatello and Andrea del Verrocchio (both now in Florence’s Bargello Museum). The deep lines between the sitter’s brows and slight grimace tugging at his handsome features also seem intended to connect Pontormo’s subject with the combative expression of a third famous image of David: Michelangelo’s heroic masterpiece, today in the Galleria dell’Accademia, Florence.
In the early sixteenth century, these David statues carried a strong partisan symbolism, associated with the Florentine republicans who opposed the Medici family’s dynastic rule. Pontormo employed this context to splendid effect in his Portrait of a Halberdier (Getty Museum, Los Angeles), painted during the brutal siege of Florence in 1529–30. The halberdier is a young soldier named Francesco Guardi who fought to defend the Florentine Republic against the Medicean invasion. In his portrait, Guardi adopts a stance very similar to that seen in the Portrait of a Young Man in a Red Cap. Indeed, the two pictures are extremely alike: painted upon panels of almost exactly the same size, with their figures’ pose and scale so close that they must surely have arisen from a single idea or template. Moreover, in his Lives of the Artists, Giorgio Vasari links Pontormo’s Portrait of a Halberdier with a portrait of Carlo di Francesco Maria di Dietisalvi Neroni, a fellow Florentine and republican ally. For this reason, the Portrait of a Young Man in a Red Cap has been, since its rediscovery in 2008, generally identified as Neroni.
Neroni was married twice—first to Caterina Capponi in 1530, and later to Elisabetta Martelli in 1540—and the ring that the sitter wears on his left hand and the slip of paper he carries in his right suggest that Portrait of a Young Man in a Red Cap was carried out in connection with one of these matrimonial events. But the polished brushwork and refined energy are very different from the exuberant handling and brilliant use of color in the Portrait of a Halberdier from 1530, suggesting that a dating of around 1540 is the more likely.
References
Damen, Giada, and Davide Gasparotto. “Portrait of a Young Man in a Red Cap (Carlo Neroni).” In Miraculous Encounters: Pontormo from Drawing to Painting, edited by Bruce L. Edelstein and Davide Gasparotto, 130–33. Florence: Palazzo Pitti; New York: Morgan Library and Museum; Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2018.
Plazzotta, Carol. “Portrait of a Young Man in a Red Cap (Carlo Neroni).” In Renaissance Faces: Van Eyck to Titian, edited by Lorne Campbell, 224–27. London: National Gallery, 2008–9.
Russell, Francis. “A Portrait of a Young Man in Black by Pontormo.” Burlington Magazine 150, no. 1267 (October 2008): 675–77.
Siemon, Julia. “Bronzino, Politics and Portraiture in 1530s Florence,” 155–89. PhD diss., Columbia University, 2015.
Siemon, Julia. “Portrait of a Young Man in a Red Cap (Carlo Neroni?).” In The Medici: Portraits and Politics, 1512–1570, edited by Keith Christiansen and Carlo Falciani, 182–84. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2021.
Vasari, Giorgio. Le vite de’ più eccellenti pittori, scultori ed architettori (1568), edited by Gaetano Milanesi, 6:275. Florence: G. C. Sansoni, 1881.