Lot Essay
The handsome, youthful courtier shown in profile to the left wears a fashionable felt cap and has elegantly cut, long wavy hair. The undercutting round the silhouette suggests that this bust was installed against a piece of architecture, possibly with a medallion or rectangle of contrastingly colored stone. Generically, its style is related to the decoration of the faades of the Certosa (Carthusian Monastery) of Pavia and the Colleoni Chapel in Bergamo, produced by Amadeo, Mantegazza and their colleagues. He might well have been accompanied by a correspondingly facing portrait of his wife.