Portrait of a Musician

The ''Portrait of a Musician''). It is sometimes known as the ''Portrait of a Young Man'', the ''Portrait of a Man with a Sheet of Music'' or the ''Musician''., group=n is an unfinished painting widely attributed to the Italian Renaissance artist Leonardo da Vinci, dated to . Produced while Leonardo was in Milan, the work is painted in oils, and perhaps tempera, on a small panel of walnut wood. It is his only known male portrait painting, and the identity of its sitter has been closely debated among scholars.

Perhaps influenced by Antonello da Messina's introduction of the Early Netherlandish style of portrait painting to Italy, the work marks a dramatic shift from the profile portraiture that predominated in 15th-century Milan. It shares many similarities with other paintings Leonardo executed there, such as the Louvre ''Virgin of the Rocks'' and the ''Lady with an Ermine'', but the ''Portrait of a Musician'' is his only panel painting remaining in the city, where it has been in the Pinacoteca Ambrosiana since at least 1672. One of Leonardo's best preserved paintings, there are no extant contemporary records of the commission. Based on stylistic resemblances to other works by Leonardo, virtually all current scholarship attributes at least the sitter's face to him. Uncertainty over the rest of the painting arises from the stiff and rigid qualities of the body, which are uncharacteristic of Leonardo's work. While this may be explained by the painting's unfinished state, some scholars believe that Leonardo was assisted by one of his students.

The portrait's intimacy indicates a private commission, or one by a personal friend. Until the 20th century it was thought to show Ludovico Sforza, a Duke of Milan and employer of Leonardo. During a 1904–1905 restoration, the removal of overpainting revealed a hand holding sheet music, indicating that the sitter was a musician. Many musicians active in Milan have been proposed as the sitter; Franchinus Gaffurius was the most favored candidate throughout the 20th century, but in the 21st century scholarly opinion shifted towards Atalante Migliorotti. Other notable suggestions include Josquin des Prez and Gaspar van Weerbeke, but there is no historical evidence to substantiate any of these claims. The work has been criticized for its stoic and wooden qualities, but noted for its intensity and the high level of detail in the subject's face. Scholarly interpretations range from the painting depicting a musician mid-performance, to representing Leonardo's self-proclaimed ideology of the superiority of painting over other art forms, such as music.

Description

Composition

This painting was executed in oils and perhaps tempera on a small, walnut wood panel. It depicts a young man in bust length and three-quarter view, whose right hand holds a folded piece of sheet music. The painting is largely unfinished save for the face and hair, but is in good condition overall, with only the bottom right corner suffering damage. The art historian Kenneth Clark noted that out of Leonardo's surviving works, the ''Musician'' is perhaps the best preserved, despite the fading of colors over time.

The bottom of the work may have been slightly trimmed. There is a small amount of retouching, especially towards the back of the head; the art historian Frank Zöllner has noted that this retouching introduced the somewhat unsuccessful shading of the neck and the left side of the lips. With its black background, the portrait is reminiscent of Leonardo's later portraits, the ''Lady with an Ermine'' and ''La Belle Ferronnière'', but differs from them in that the sitter's body and head face the same direction. The biographer Walter Isaacson has noted that due to the work's unfinished state, the portrait's shadows are overtly harsh, and the portrait itself features fewer of the thin layers of oil paint typically found in Leonardo's paintings.

The musician

The sitter has curly shoulder-length hair, wears a red cap, and stares intently at something outside the viewer's field of vision. His stare is intensified by careful lighting that focuses attention on his face, especially on his large glassy eyes. He wears a tight white undershirt. The painting of his black doublet