Portrait of a Man
by BOTTICELLI, Sandro, Tempera on canvas transferred from wood, 49 x 35 cm
According to Berenson, the sitter of this portrait is Michele Marullo (1453-1500), known as Tarcaniota, a Greek humanist, who was the guest of the Medici’s between 1489 and 1495. Later, in 1496, he returned to Florence and married the woman poet Alessandra Scala. He left Florence in 1490 and soon after he died by drowning into the river Cecina.
This painting can be considered an ideal scholar portrait, a forerunner of those portrayals of philosopher-heroes developed in the seventeenth century, e.g. by Luca Giordano.
The painting is in a very poor state of preservation.