Resumen de "Cogitat ut scribat": un nuovo '(Auto?)ritratto' del Bronzino
The article discusses a portrait of a young man thus far excluded from scholarship on Bronzino, to whom it was attributed in the early nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Its collecting history reveals the critical vagaries of the artist in the last century, intersecting with one of Europe's darkest moments: after being ascribed to Salviati in 1930s Germany, the picture entered the Führermuseum in Linz as Jacopino del Conte, and it bore this attribution when it was returned to his legitimate owners in 2021.
The author believes the portrait is an autograph early work by Bronzino, painted when still under the influence of Pontormo, and offers an interpretation of the sheet of Latin verse -depicted next to an inkwell of unusual and probably symbolic shape- indicated by the sitter to the beholder. The young man declares he is undecided about whether to express himself through writing or concrete action, probably to be understood here as painting. This statement, and a consideration of some late self-portraits by Bronzino, make it possible to posit that the work is a youthful self-portrait.
