Portrait of a Young Man

A young man swivels over his shoulder to fix the viewer with a sudden, level look, a block or ledger in his hands, his lavender-blue sleeve catching the light against a dim grey-green ground. Andrea del Sarto builds the whole portrait from a narrow, muted range of color and the softest gradations of shadow, and out of that restraint conjures an arresting living presence. The sitter's name is lost - he has been called a sculptor from the block he holds - but the directness of the encounter survives undimmed. It is among the most quietly modern-seeming portraits of the Italian Renaissance.