Resumen de Il ritratto di Carlo Rimbotti, un committente fiorentino di Francesco Salviati
An unpublished portrait, attributable without difficulty to Francesco Salviati on the basis of style, allows for a new reconstruction of the artist's relations with Florence around the year 1548, just before his permanent departure for Rome. The sitter, Carlo Rimbotti, can be identified, and his age established as thirty thanks to some faint but ancient inscriptions on the back of the panel. Until now only one documentary references was known, in the will of Carlo's son Tomasso Rimbotti. The sitter was born in 1518, studied medicine at Bologna University and was aged thirty when Salviati portrayed him in 1548. He had become a practicing doctor in 1543, but had been admitted to the Florentine Academy in January 1542, participating actively in accademic life and giving three public lectures. We know that the last of these, delivered in December 1542, before the formally took up his profession, was about a sonnet by Petrarch, and it may be for this reason that the portrait shows him holding a small book -perhaps a "petrarchino"- rather tan medical instruments.
