The importance and beauty of this painting (attributed to Bronzino by Calzi in 1909) earned it the right to be shown under Santi di Tito’s name in a famous exhibition of Italian portraits held in Palazzo Vecchio in Florence in 1911 to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the reunification of Italy. In any event, while it was always clear that this was a painting by a Florentine artist, it has now finally and convincingly been attributed to Mirabello Cavalori, a rare and sophisticated painter and member of the group chosen by Vasari to decorate Francesco I’s Studiolo in Palazzo Vecchio in Florence.
The elegant young man is dressed with sober sophistication. He sports a doublet made of thick fabric decorated with the stitching and small vertical slashes so fashionable at the time (notice the threads of the cut cloth in the background), with matching buttons at the front and on the sleeve. His white ruff is magnificently starched, with perfect, regular pleats. The bust is shown in profile, but the sitter’s head turns its direct, intense gaze on the observer, his solemn expression seemingly confimed by his tight, earnest mouth framed by a moustache and a soul patch on his chin. The mood reflects the suspended atmosphere of an important moment, in which the aim is to draw attention prior to the announcement of an event or an occasion, revealed in this instance by the sitter’s hand displaying a bizarre object. Portraits of young men showing a ring or a jewel are easily identified as the iconographical formula for a goldsmith (although characterised in such cases by the presence of other jewels or tools of the trade) or, more probably, for a betrothed. The Faenza portrait falls into the latter category. Yet in this case the sitter is holding in his hand not a ring but a key ring of a type already in use in ancient Rome, when the absence of pockets in clothing meant that such items were hung on a string (the Victoria and Albert Museum in London has a – probably – 3rd century BC example of one: https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O122113/ring-unknown/). Such small keys, with their complex carvings and indentations, generally served to open not doors but the locks of small coffers, boxes for storing documents or jewel boxes.
In the Faenza painting, which as we have seen is a typical portrait of a betrothed, the key ring displayed as a precious pledge acquires a symbolic value. Far from being a common or garden jewel, it reveals the sitter’s intention to open his beloved’s heart, or in any case to be the only one enjoying access to the treasured sentiments that that heart holds. Stylistic similarities with works that can be dated to the period and, in particular, with the portraits in Cavalori’s large altarpiece depicting St. Thomas Aquinas and His Devotees (signed and dated 1568. Florence, Gallerie degli Uffizi, in storage) where the figures at the saint’s feet display features very much akin to those of the young man portrayed here, tell us that Mirabello must have painted this enigmatic portrait c. 1565–70. The proposal put forward by Nesi (2009) identifying the sitter as Guglielmo di Martino Giuliani, one of the devotees in the altarpiece, however, must, in our view, remain confined to the realm of hypothesis, among other reasons because the Faenza sitter also bears a vague resemblance to other figures in the altarpiece.
The Faenza portrait, where one can detect signs of “second thoughts” in the execution of the head (which originally sat a little further to the right), contains features that can be identified in all of Cavalori’s male portraits: an austere pose and expression, a particularly ‘close-up’ view of the head, which invariably emerges from a white lettice ruff, and a palette which, while seemingly limited, is in fact, if we look a little more closely, remarkably rich in nuance and in imperceptible variation. Only close observation reveals the almost imperceptible reddening of the eyelids (hinting at a tear of emotion?), the touch of pinkish highlight on the lower lip, the many shades of white and grey-white that help to build the ruff as though it were a sculpture and the different shades of black that impart a palpable quality to the soft fabric of the doublet.
