Bust of a Man

This portrait is painted in fresco using mineral pigments suspended in water on wet plaster. The technique gives results of great freshness and immediacy.

It has been suggested that this picture may be Florentine. There seems once to have been a female portrait, which was a pendant to this work (present whereabouts unknown). Several 17th-century Florentine artists made portable fresco paintings on wickerwork, slate or, as here, terracotta roof tiles.