ROSSELLI, Cosimo
(b. 1439, Firenze, d. 1507, Firenze)

Portrait of a Man

c. 1485
Tempera on wood, 52 x 34 cm
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

The clothes of the unknown sitter - a bright red doublet lined with ermine, a linen undershirt visible at the collar, and a tall cap - indicate he was a member of the Florentine patrician class. Rosselli painted many portraits of his contemporaries, most of them as bystanders in his religious compositions. The present painting is one of his rare easel portraits. It is of such high quality that some critics have assigned it to Botticelli or the Pollaiuolo brothers.