Cosimo Rosselli, "Portrait of a Gentleman", The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (Edward S. Harkness collection, bequest, 1940).

Speranza




The style of this painting indicates a date about the time of Rosselli's frescoes of 1481-1482 in the Sistine Chapel.

The gentleman bears a certain resemblance to a man who appears in his fresco of the Sermon of the Mount in the Sistine Chapel and also in the fresco of the Procession of the Mraculous Chalice in the church of Sant'Ambrogio in Firenze, painted in 1586.

All three of these representations may well be self-portraits, though the red robe of this painting, trimmed with ermine, suggests that the subject is more likely a 'gentleman' than a painter.

This painting is a representative example of Florentine portraiture in the second half of the fifteenth century, before it was modified and enriched during the 1480s under the inlfuence of Hans Memling.

This was a bequest of Edward S. Harnkness in 1940.