Andrea del Sarto, 'Portrait of a Young Man', about 1517-18

Portrait of a Young Man

Andrea del Sarto

Not on display

About the work

Overview

We have interrupted a young man reading; he turns to look over his shoulder at us. The unguarded look creates the impression that we are seeing him as he really is. His identity is uncertain, although he may be the stationer Lorenzo di Matteo Peri, whose family commissioned Andrea del Sarto’s Dispute on the Trinity (Galleria Palatina, Florence) for their altar in the church of S. Jacopo tra Fossi in Florence.

Daylight falls as if from a high narrow window to our left, casting a soft clear light, brilliant on the pleats of his fine white shirt. It reflects up to define the curve of his jaw, the cleft in his chin, the line of his nose and the twist of his neck. His eyes smoulder, creating the sense that this is only a momentary glance before he turns away again.

The spiral fluidity of the pose is derived from Leonardo’s work, as are the smoky, atmospheric effects. The restriction of colour and dramatic lighting add to the portrait’s intensity.

In-depth

Only a small number of portraits by Andrea del Sarto survive. This is one of his masterpieces. It was painted at a time when he was the leading painter in Florence, Raphael, Leonardo and Michelangelo all having left the city.

A young man sits in a chair reading a book with his back to us. We have interrupted him and he turns to look over his shoulder at us. The turning pose and unguarded look create the sense that we are seeing him as he really is. This gives the portrait a feeling of immediacy and produces a convincing impression of the sitter’s psychology. He is shown reading, which suggests that he has an interest in books, and his costume is that of a Florentine craftsman.

His elbow rests on the arm of the chair and partly projects into our space, creating a strong diagonal running from the top right to bottom left of the composition. The voluminous blue sleeve has a very convincing sense of sculptural form and is the pivotal point around which the turning pose rotates. Sarto probably made detailed studies from life for it.

Three red chalk drawings of different poses in the Uffizi, Florence, may have been made in preparation for this portrait. The drawings reveal that Sarto drastically revised his ideas before he finally came up with this pose. The man’s projecting elbow seems to have been a constant idea; the decision to position him looking back over his shoulder only arrived at later.

Daylight falls on the young man as if from a high narrow window to our left. Light is very important in this portrait as it is the means by which form is defined and atmosphere created. Light defines the shape of the man’s skull under the dark hat and adds bulk to his sleeve. It is a soft clear light, brilliant on the pleats of his fine white shirt, which reflects the light up to define the curve of his jaw, the cleft in his chin, the shapely line of his nose and the twist of his neck. His eyes smoulder in their dark sockets and we have the sense that this is only a momentary glance before he turns away from us again to resume his reading.

We are not certain of the man’s identity. The painting was first documented as belonging to the Puccini family – in 1821 and 1832 it was recorded at their palace in Pistoia. Giovan Battista Puccini was one of Andrea del Sarto’s patrons, but he would have been in his mid-fifties by 1517 when this picture was painted, so it is unlikely that the portrait is of him.

The hands and the book are less finished than the rest of the portrait and hard to decipher, which has led some people to believe he is actually a sculptor holding a block of cut stone. It has also been suggested that the sitter is Paolo da Terrarossa, another patron of Andrea del Sarto, whose family was involved in the production of bricks. However, the object held by the sitter is definitely not a brick, and the Uffizi drawings clearly demonstrate that the young man was intended from the start to be holding a book. When the portrait was bought by the National Gallery in 1862, the director believed it to be a self portrait, although there is no evidence to support this identification either. It is more likely that the sitter is the stationer Lorenzo di Matteo Peri (1490 – about 1527), whose family commissioned Andrea del Sarto’s Dispute on the Trinity (Galleria Palatina, Florence) in 1517–18 for their altar in the church of S. Jacopo tra Fossi in Florence. The sitter of the National Gallery portrait closely resembles Saint Peter Martyr in the altarpiece and it is likely that the individual from the Peri family who commissioned the altarpiece was portrayed twice by Andrea del Sarto during the same period.

The spiral fluidity of the pose in the portrait is derived from Leonardo’s work, as is the sfumato – the smoky, atmospheric effect. The limited palette of colours is very subtle, relying on pale greys, blue-lilac, black, white and brown. The restriction of colour and dramatic lighting adds the the intensity of the portrait.

Although Sarto was trained in Florence and worked there, the way he has used oil paint here is more akin to Venetian painters – he has modelled form in melting colour and light rather than in tones of black and white. His interest in effects of colour and atmosphere, as well as the informal pose and the natural expression of emotion, set him apart from Florentine painters of his time. The pose may have been inspired by Venetian examples – Titian’s Portrait of Gerolamo Barbarigo of about 1510 shows the sitter glancing over his shoulder, with a similar projecting voluminous blue sleeve against a plain grey background. Where Titian has marked his initials ‘TV’ in the stone parapet, Andrea (whose real name was Andrea d‘Agnolo) has marked his intertwined ’AA‘ on the background.

The pared-back composition, limited colour palette, sense of an interrupted moment and of psychological intensity seen here were to be developed further in portraits by the next generation of painters, such as Moroni’s Portrait of the sculptor Alessandro Vittoria of 1552–3 (Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna) and his Tailor of 1565–70. Although Andrea del Sarto was celebrated during his lifetime as a ’faultless painter', his fame was eclipsed after his death by that of Leonardo, Michelangelo and Raphael. He was particularly influential in training younger Florentine painters, including Jacopo Pontormo, Rosso Fiorentino and Francesco Salviati.

Key facts

Details

Full title: Portrait of a Young Man
Artist: Andrea del Sarto
Artist dates: 1486 - 1530
Date made: about 1517-18
Medium and support: oil on canvas
Dimensions: 72.4 × 57.2 cm
Inscription summary: Signed
Acquisition credit: Bought, 1862
Inventory number: NG690
Location: Not on display
Collection: Main Collection
Frame: 16th-century Italian Frame

Provenance

Cavaliere Niccolò Puccini of Pistoia, from whose estate bought, 1862, by Sir Charles Eastlake for the Gallery. Reiset claims it was once in the collection of the Marchese Campana, but this was in fact a different picture seen, in 1856, by Eastlake in the Campana collection in Rome and described by him as on panel and measuring 2' 10½" × 1' 3½".

Additional information

Text extracted from the ‘Provenance’ section of the catalogue entry in Cecil Gould, ‘National Gallery Catalogues: The Sixteenth Century Italian Schools’, London 1987; for further information, see the full catalogue entry.

Exhibition history

2015

Andrea del Sarto: The Renaissance Workshop in Action

The Getty Center Los Angeles

23 June 2015 - 13 September 2015

The Frick Collection

6 October 2015 - 10 January 2016

Bibliography

1821

F. Tolomei, Guida di Pistoia, Pistoia 1821
1832

L. Biardi, Notizie…d'andrea del Sarto… Supplimento, Florence 1832
1854

G. Tigri, Pistoia e il suo territorio guida del forestiero, Pistoia 1854
1863

R.N. Wornum, Descriptive and Historical Catalogue of the Pictures in the National Gallery, with Biographical Notes of the Painters: Foreign Schools, 37th edn, London 1863
1863

London, National Gallery Archive: Report of the Director of the National Gallery, 3 January 1863, Purchases and Appendix 1
1864

National Gallery, Descriptive and Historical Catalogue of the Pictures in the National Gallery: Foreign Schools, London 1864
1877

P. Mantz, 'Andrea del Sarto', Gazette des beaux-arts, XV, 1877
1877

F. Reiset, 'Une visite aux musées de Londres en 1876, IV', Gazette des beaux-arts, XV, 1877, pp. 449-61
1878

H. Blackburn, Illustrated Catalogue to the National Gallery: Foreign Schools, London 1878
1883

J.P. Richter, Italian Art in the National Gallery, London 1883
1887

M.-F. Reiset, Une visite à la Galerie nationale de Londres, 2nd revised edn, Rapilly 1887
1888

E.T. Cook, A Popular Handbook to the National Gallery Including, by Special Permission, Notes Collected from the Works of Mr. Ruskin, London 1888
1889

National Gallery, Descriptive and Historical Catalogue of the Pictures in the National Gallery with Biographical Notices of the Painters: Foreign Schools, London 1889
1899

H. Guinness, Andrea del Sarto, London 1899
1901

National Gallery, Descriptive and Historical Catalogue of the Pictures in the National Gallery, London 1901
1901

E. Jacobsen, 'Italienische Gemälde in der National Galerie zu London: Kritische Notizen zum Katalog von 1898', Repertorium für Kunstwissenschaft, XXIV, 1901
1903

J.A. Crowe and G.B. Cavalcaselle, A History of Painting in Italy, Umbria, Florence and Siena, from the Second to the Sixteenth Century, ed. R.L. Douglas, 2nd edn, 6 vols, London 1903
1906

G. Gronau (ed.), Die Lebensbeschriebungen der berühmtesten Architekten, Bildhauer und Maler, Strasbourg 1906
1907

F. Knapp, Andrea del Sarto, Leipzig 1907
1910

F. di Pietro, I disegni di Andrea del Sarto negli Uffizi, Siena 1910
1925

National Gallery, National Gallery, Trafalgar Square: Catalogue, London 1925
1930

A.J. Rusconi, 'Autoritratti', Il marzocco, 1930
1935

I. Fraenckel, Andrea del Sarto: Gemälde und Zeichnungen, Strasbourg 1935
1948

J. Alazard, The Florentine Portrait, London 1948
1951

H. Wagner, Andrea del Sarto: Seine Stellung zu Renaissance und Manierismus, Strasbourg 1951
1952

G.B. Battista Commandé, L'opera di Andrea del Sarto, Palermo 1952
1954

L. Marucci, Mostra di disegni dei primi manieristi Italiani (exh. cat. Gabinetto dei Disegni e delle Stampe degli Uffizi, 1954), Florence 1954
1961

S.J. Freedberg, Painting of the High Renaissance in Rome and Florence, Cambridge MA 1961
1962

Gould, Cecil, National Gallery Catalogues: The Sixteenth Century Italian Schools (excluding the Venetian), London 1962
1963

S.J. Freedberg, Andrea del Sarto: Catalogue Raisonné, Cambridge MA 1963
1963

E.K. Waterhouse, 'Andrea del Sarto's "Portrait of a Young Man"', The Listener, 1963, pp. 888‑9
1965

J. Shearman, Andrea del Sarto, Oxford 1965
1966

J. Pope-Hennessy, The Portrait in the Renaissance, New York 1966
1986

A. Cecchi and M. Chiarini, Andrea del Sarto, 1486-1530: Dipinti e Disegni a Firenze, (exh. cat. Palazzo Pitti, 8 November 1986 - 1 March 1987), Florence 1986
1987

Gould, Cecil, National Gallery Catalogues: The Sixteenth Century Italian Schools, London 1987
1987

M. Roskill and C. Harbison, 'On the Nature of Holbein's Portraits', Word and Image, III/1, 1987, pp. 1-26
1989

A. Cecchi and A. Natali, Andrea del Sarto: Catalogo completo dei dipinti, Florence 1989
1989

P. Costamagna, 'La formation de Carlo Portellu: Précisions et adjonctions au catalogue', Annali, II, 1989, pp. 17‑25
1990

L. Campbell, Renaissance Portraits: European Portrait-Painting in the 14th, 15th and 16th Centuries, New Haven 1990
2001

C. Baker and T. Henry, The National Gallery: Complete Illustrated Catalogue, London 2001
2001

D. Franklin, Painting in Renaissance Florence, 1500-1550, New Haven 2001
2002

P. Costamagna, 'De l'idéal de la Beauté aux problèmes d'attribution: Vingt ans de recherche sur le portrait florentin au XVIe siècle', Studiolo, 1, 2002, pp. 193-220
2004

C.B. Strehlke, Pontormo, Bronzino, and the Medici: The Transformation of the Renaissance Portrait in Florence (exh. cat. Philadelphia Museum of Art, 20 November 2004 - 13 February 2005), Milan 2004
2005

P. Costamagna, 'Appunti: De la "fiorentinità" des portraits de Pontormo et de Bronzino', Paragone, LVI/665, 2005, pp. 50-75
2005

D. Franklin, Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, and the Renaissance in Florence (exh. cat. National Gallery of Canada, 29 May - 5 September 2005), Ottawa 2005

About this record

If you know more about this painting or have spotted an error, please contact us. Please note that exhibition histories are listed from 2009 onwards. Bibliographies may not be complete; more comprehensive information is available in the National Gallery Library.

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