Portrait of a Young Man

A young man appears in this characteristic small portrait from around 1538 at the Museum of Fine Arts Boston. Corneille de Lyon's portraits were collected avidly in sixteenth-century France, where their intimate scale and precise characterization made them valued personal possessions. His works traveled widely, and this portrait's presence in Boston reflects the American appetite for French Renaissance art. peintre du roi in Lyon, portraitist to the French royal family including Henri II and Catherine de' Medici.

The bust-length format against a plain colored ground is Corneille's signature approach, reducing the portrait to its essential elements of face and expression. The young man's features are rendered with fine brushwork that captures individual characteristics without exaggeration. The small scale demands extraordinary precision in the handling of eyes, mouth, and the subtle modulations of flesh tone.