Philip Rylands points out, loc. cit., that the present picture was attributed to Palma Vecchio by Gronau and von Hadeln on photograph mounts in the Witt Library, as well as by Gombosi, loc. cit. The attribution has also been endorsed by Everett Fahy (private communication). Rylands concurs by comparison with the similar bust-length portrait of a man in a beret in the Galleria Borghese, Rome (his no. 1, p. 147, illustrated), which is dated 1510. He proposes a similarly early date, at the outset of the artist's career, for the present painting, pointing out that the bust-length format, in the tradition of Alvise Vivarini, Giovanni Bellini and above all Andrea Previtali, was soon to be superceded by the half-length portrait type pioneered by Giorgione, Titian and Sebastiano del Piombo.