The work, from Anna Candiani’s Paduan collection, is an example of the potraiture of Marco Basaiti, defined as a “figurer” (that is, a painter who specialises in figures and portraits) in the 1530 “fraglia”, or corporation list of artisans. The attribution to Basaiti, affirmed by Robertson, is still controversial, and other names put forward include Marco Marziale, Vittore Belliniano, and Vincenzo Catena. The type of portrait of a half-bust in a landscape is common in Venetian portraiture at the turn of the sixteenth century, and can be found in other panels attributed to Basaiti such as the Portrait of a Young Man at the National Gallery in London and, above all, the 1496 Portrait of a Young Boy (formerly in the von Pannwitz collection, Buenos Aires), his first signed and dated work. The way form is constructed through the juxtaposition of large swathes of background colour and lights and shadows can be found in Basaiti’s entire series of portraits, as can also the positioning of the landscape in the upper half of the panel. What we don’t have here, however, is the subject looking directly at the observer, a device often used by the artist.