Portrait of a Young Man - Pietro Perugino

Perugino's small panel portrait of a youth in a blue cap and brown jerkin, painted in 1495 and now in the Uffizi, Florence.

Pietro Perugino (about 1448–1523) was the leading painter of Umbria at the end of the fifteenth century. He ran workshops in Perugia and Florence and taught the young Raphael. Earlier, in the 1470s, he had worked in Florence in the circle of Andrea del Verrocchio, alongside Leonardo da Vinci and Lorenzo di Credi.

This small panel, 37 × 26 cm, is in the Uffizi in Florence, which dates it to 1495 and calls it Portrait of a Young Man. It is also known as Portrait of a Boy. The sitter's name is not recorded.

The youth is shown at half length against a plain dark ground. He wears a blue cap set towards the back of his head, and his brown hair falls to his shoulders. His brown jerkin is closed at the neck with a cord tie, and pale slashes show at the shoulders. His head turns slightly to one side while his eyes look straight out, and that steady gaze gives the picture its directness.

Light falls from the left and models the face in soft steps of tone. Perugino keeps the brushwork almost invisible, so the surface reads as smooth and even. The dark background and the dark clothes leave the face and the hair as the only light areas, which draws the eye straight to the sitter.

Portraits of this kind, a single head and shoulders set close to the picture plane, became common in Florence in the 1480s and 1490s. Perugino's version is plain and calm, with nothing in the picture to tell us the young man's rank or trade.

The painting is in oil on panel. It came to the Uffizi from the Medici collections and is part of the gallery's permanent collection in Florence.