Jacopo Pontormo, Portrait of a young lute player, c.1529:30. Oil on panel, 81.2 by 57.7 cm. Private collection.
Just a quick heads up: the latest issue of the Burlington Magazine January 2016, No. 1354, vol. 158) includes my review of the excellent exhibition of Florentine sixteenth-century portraiture. Curated by Carlo Falciani, it is showing at the Musée Jacquemart-André in Paris till 26 January. Do go see it if you can, it’s a real treat.
An excerpt, on the amazing portrait reproduced above:
…Pontormo’s rarely seen and excellently preserved portrait of a Portrait of a young lute player from a private collection (c.1529:30…) Everything is shaped by the artist’s peculiar temperament: the globular head, the swelling torso, the voluminous lute and the tubular pink sleeves that billow as though hot hair were blowing through them: a picture as much about circular movement as it is about the boy behind
the mask.