Jeune chasseur au faucon

The Master of the Bargello Tondo was an anonymous Florentine painter of the late fifteenth century named for a tondo in the Bargello, whose work shows the influence of Botticelli's workshop and Ghirlandaio's atelier. His Jeune chasseur au faucon — a young hunter with a falcon — is exceptional as a secular subject in a body of work otherwise dominated by devotional panels; the image belongs to the tradition of the portrait historié in which a young donor or patron is depicted in a role that blends portraiture with mythological or courtly identity.

The Master of the Bargello Tondo depicts the falconer with the careful attention to dress and equipment of a portrait painter rather than a genre painter — the falcon's jesses, the hunting glove, and the young man's elegant contemporary costume are rendered with Ghirlandaesque precision. The landscape background shows the influence of Flemish naturalism that was filtering into Florentine workshop practice in the 1480s–90s.