(active Lombardy, circa 1467-1524/5)
Portrait of a man
oil on canvas transferred from panel, 65 x 57.5 cm, framed

Provenance:
Conte Cesare Pompeo di Castelbarco, Milan, by 1843, and by descent to his son;
Conte Carlo Castelbarco, Milan, by 1860;
sale Hotel Drouot, Paris, 2-6 May 1870, lot 14 (as ‘Francesco Francia’);
Anonymous sale Gimpel, Paris, 1904 (to Payne);
Colonel Oliver H. Payne, New York, and by descent to Harry Payne Bingham Jr.,
by whom gifted to The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1958;
sale Christie´s, New York, 6th June 2012, lot 79

Exhibited:
New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Loan Exhibition of the Arts of the Italian Renaissance, 7 May – 9 September 1923, no. 31 (as ‘Lombard School’)

Literature:
G. Vallardi, Ritratto del duca Cesare Valentino Borgia, dipinto da Raffaele Sanzio, scoperto nella galleria Castelbarco a Milano, Milan, 1843;
C. Cantù in Milano e il suo territorio, Milan, 1844, II, p. 278 (as ‘Attributed to Raphael’);
O. Mündler, Diary entry, 28 March 1856, p. 37r, in: C. T. Dowd (ed.), The Travel Diaries of Otto Mündler, 1855-1858, Walpole Society, 1985 (as ‘Andrea Solario’);
M. Fabi, Milano e suoi dintorni, Milan, 1859, p. 17; J.-D. Passavant, Raphael d’Urbin et son père Giovanni Santi, Paris, 1860, II, p. 364, no. 304 in supplement (as ‘a copy of the portrait of Cesare Borgia by Raphael in the Borghese palace, Rome’);
Picture Sales, Art-Journal, XXXII, 1 July 1870, p. 221;
Galerie de M. le comte C. Castelbarco, in: Chronique des arts et de la curiosité, supplément à la Gazette des beaux-arts, 1 May 1870, p. 71 (as ‘Francia’);
J. A. Crowe and G.B. Cavalcaselle, A History of Painting in North Italy: Venice, Padua, Vicenza, Verona, Ferrara, Milan, Friuli, Brescia, from the Fourteenth to the Sixteenth Century, London, 1871, II, p. 453 (as ‘Altobello Melone’);
J. A. Crowe and G.B. Cavalcaselle, Raphael: His Life and Works, II, London, 1885, p. 561 (as ‘Altobello Melone’);
G. Morelli, Letter, 30 December 1887, in: Italienische Malerei der Renaissance im Briefwechsel von Giovanni Morelli und Jean Paul Richer, Baden-Baden, 1960, p. 520 (as ‘Solario’);
C. Yriarte, Les portraits de César Borgia, in: Gazette des beaux-arts, 2nd ed., XXXVI, 1887, pp. 296-301 (as ‘Altobello Melone’);
C. Yriarte, Autour des Borgia, Paris, 1891, pp. 103, 105-107;
G. Morelli, Della pittura italiana, Milan, 1897, pp. 131, 173;
J. A. Crowe and G. B. Cavalcaselle, A History of Painting in North Italy: Venice, Padua, Vicenza, Verona, Ferrara, Milan, Friuli, Brescia, from the Fourteenth to the Sixteenth Century, 2nd ed., London, 1912, III, p. 348, no. 2;
Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler, XXIV, Leipzig, 1930, p. 369 (as ‘Altobello Melone’);
W. Suida, Pitture lombarde del rinascimento: I, lo Pseudo-Boccaccino, in: Arte lombarda, II, 1956, pp. 91, 93, figs. 6-8 (as ‘Pseudo-Boccaccino, c. 1620-1630’);
B. Berenson, Italian Pictures of the Renaissance: Central Italian and North Italian Schools, London, 1968, I, p. 173 (as ‘Pseudo-Boccaccino, Giovanni Agostino da Lodi’);
B. B. Fredericksen and F. Zeri, Census of Pre-Nineteenth-Century Italian Paintings in North American Public Collections, Cambridge, M.A., 1972, pp. 125, 524, 609 (as ‘Pseudo-Boccaccino’);
E. E. Gardner, Dipinti rinascimentali del Metropolitan Museum nelle carte di G. B. Cavalcaselle, in: Saggi e memorie di storia dell’arte, VIII, 1972, pp. 73-74, figs. 27-28;
F. Zeri, Italian Paintings in the Walters Art Gallery, Baltimore, 1976, II, p. 419, under no. 291;
F. Zeri and E. E. Gardner, Italian Paintings: A Catalogue of the Collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, North Italian School, New York, 1986, p. 56, pl. 54 (as ‘c. 1515’);
F. Moro, Giovanni Agostino da Lodi ovvero l’Agostino di Bramantino: appunti per un unico percorso, in: Paragone, XL, July 1989, p. 25 (as ‘Pseudo-Boccaccino, Giovanni Agostino da Lodi’);
G. Morelli, Della pittura italiana, Milan, 1991, pp. 427, 449, nos. 94, 292;
A. Morandotti, Le stampe di traduzione come fonti per la storia del collezionismo: il caso di Milano fra età napolenica e restaurazione, in: Il lombardo-veneto, 1814-1859: storia e cultura, Pasian di Prato, 1996, pp. 203, 236, nos. 111, 115, 116, pls. 39, 40;
Morandotti, Il collezionismo privato, gli esperti locali, i conoscitori stranieri, in: Milano pareva deserta...: 1848-1859, l’invenzione della patria, Milan, 1999, pp. 316-317