Portrait of a Young Man

Although the young man’s face is illuminated, his plain brown dress, dark, shoulder-length hair, and black cap merge with the background. Accordingly, the outline of his figure does not stand out incisively from the background but blends with it. Few Quattrocento paintings can match this portrait in terms of its formal austerity and limited palette. It was most likely made in Florence, where portraits with dark,atmospheric backgrounds had been appearing since the 1470s, largely owing to the influence of Netherlandish pictures such as Memling’s portraits. Florentine examples are by Piero del Pollaiolo, Domenico Ghirlandaio, and Sandro Botticelli. All examples show similar contrast between lit face and dark background.

Documented altarpieces by Raffaellino are characterised by a repetition of artistic models rather than by originality. However, his distinctive synthesis of Filippino Lippi’s eccentric manner of introducing movement into his compositions with elements of the staid, formal vocabulary of Perugino’s Florentine works that accounts for the charm of his relatively small oeuvre.