Portrait of a young man, bust-length, in a black coat and white collar

We are grateful to Dr. Francesca Baldassari for the attribution to Jacopo Vignali, given after inspection of the original. Like his most famous pupil, Carlo Dolci, Jacopo Vignali was notably precocious, entering the studio of Matteo Roselli in Florence in around 1605, when he was thirteen years old. Between 1615 and 1628 he was one of the team of artists involved in the commission for the extensive decoration of the various rooms of the Casa Buonarroti in Florence. The features of the principal figure in Vignali's ceiling painting The Love of the Fatherland in the Casa Buonarroti, completed in 1616 (the same year that the artist was admitted to the Accademia del Disegno in Florence) recall that of the present lot, which is painted with a characteristic sensitivity. The direct, relaxed gaze of the sitter and his understated, everyday clothes indicate that this may be a portrait of a friend or fellow artist.