Portrait of a Musician

The Portrait of a Musician is Leonardo's only surviving male portrait and one of his few works remaining in Milan, where it hangs in the Pinacoteca Ambrosiana. Painted around 1485 during Leonardo's first Milanese period, the sitter has been variously identified as Franchino Gaffurio, the maestro di cappella at Milan Cathedral, or the composer Atalante Migliorotti. The subject holds a sheet of musical notation, the only clearly legible detail uncovered during cleaning in 1905. The painting remains unfinished in the lower portions, with only the face brought to Leonardo's characteristic high finish.

The face is modeled with extraordinary subtlety using Leonardo's sfumato technique, creating soft transitions between light and shadow that give the features remarkable three-dimensionality. The contrast between the highly finished face and the sketchy, unresolved costume and background provides rare insight into Leonardo's working process, revealing his practice of building up forms from dark underlayers.