Head and Shoulders of a Bearded Man

Salviati, who briefly studied with Andrea del Sarto, frescoed the Sala dell'Udienza in Palazzo Vecchio for Cosimo I de' Medici in 1543–45. This carefully rendered image was once thought to be a portrait of the Florentine sculptor Baccio Bandinelli (1493–1560), Salviati's teacher and a fellow artist employed at the Medici court. This identification, however, seems unlikely, particularly since the head resembles a similar bearded figure of an apostle in Salviati's Incredulity of Saint Thomas, painted in 1547 and now in the Louvre, Paris.