The whereabouts of the present picture were unknown between 1943 and its reappearance in 1979 in the Los Angeles exhibition, in the catalogue of which Professor Terisio Pignatti describes the painting as 'an extraordinary example of Veronese's early portraiture' and suggests, by comparison with the 'Portrait of Francesco Franceschini', dated 1551, in the Ringling Museum of Art, Sarasota, Florida (Pignatti, op. cit., 1976, no.19 and fig.27), that it may be his earliest portrait. Pignatti stresses the contrast between Veronese's style of portraiture and that current in Venice: 'The young artist, having just arrived as a twenty-year-old from the provinces, seemed to ignore Titian's theatrical grandiloquence as well as Tintoretto's symbolism. Instead, he favoured the intimacy and colour of the Lombards like Moretto or Moroni. This little known portrait of a warrior ... is patiently and incisively drawn, highlighted by a play of reflections on the accurately modelled surfaces'