English: "This exquisite portrait of a youth is usually considered the sole survivor of Cosmè Tura's activity as a portrait painter at the Este court of Ferrara. The only other certain portrait by him is the kneeling figure of Cardinal Bartolomeo Roverella on a lateral panel of an altarpiece in the Colonna Collection, Rome. Additionally, Tura has been attributed with the design of three medals of Duke Ercole d'Este, the duchess Eleonora of Aragon, and their son Alfonso, as well as a portrait miniature of the duchess. Tura was employed at the Este court from 1451, but it is only in 1472 that we have a record of him painting portraits. The first was of Duke Ercole I and his illegitimate daughter Lucrezia d'Este; these were painted on canvas to facilitate their shipment to Naples as a gift for Ercole's future wife, Eleonora of Aragon. A pattern was established: in 1477, three portraits of the infant Alfonso d'Este, whose future claim to the duchy had been secured the previous year by the execution of his half-cousin, Niccolò, the son of Leonello d'Este; 1479, a portrait of Lucrezia d'Este to send to her promised husband, Annibale Bentivoglio; 1480, a portrait of the six-year-old Isabella d'Este on the occasion of her betrothal to Francesco Gonzaga; 1485, one of the ten-year-old Beatrice d'Este to her promised spouse Ludovico il Moro (Manca 2000, docs. 74, 96, 101–2, 107, 115). As is evident from this list, the commission of portraits was associated with dynastic ambition, alliances, and the commemoration of important events. Prices varied from three florins for each of the portraits of the infant Alfonso to four for the others (the price for the portraits on canvas is not indicated). Although the portraits are invariably described as taken from life, they are likely to have been bust-length, profile portraits much like the one in the Metropolitan: the sitter accommodated to an accepted formula. Examination of the Metropolitan's portrait with infrared reflectography reveals no underdrawing, and it seems likely that a detailed drawing—"retratto dal naturale"—was employed.

The dates assigned to Tura's portrait range from the mid-1450s to, most recently and convincingly, the mid-1470s (see Syson 1999, and, for a review of the various opinions, Manca 2000). A date in the mid- to late 1470s would be in keeping with Tura's documented activity as court portraitist—a position practiced under Ercole's predecessor, Borso, by Baldassare d'Este. Certainly, the richly described hair, the cascading waves of which offer a perfect foil for the imperturbable expression and minimal modeling of the face, compares favorably with what is found in a Saint Christopher (Gemäldegalerie, Berlin) from an altarpiece that is usually dated no earlier than ca. 1470. As others have noted, the emphasis on a sharply defined profile and the shallow, delicately inflected modeling of the head compare well with the medal of Ercole designed by Tura ca. 1477–78. Although the identity of the sitter remains a matter of conjecture, his profile has features similar to those of Borso d'Este and he is likely a member of the Este family, though none of the identities thus far proposed is completely convincing. The youth wears a green doublet with lacing, or rather arming points, on the sleeves, a fringed tunic (giornea), and a red cap. Arming points were used to secure armor—the vambrace—to the arm, but by around 1450 they had become a fashion accessory independent of their original function (Capwell 2002, pp. 183–84). The sitter is blond and blue-eyed, and his coiffed hair is arranged so as to frame his face with a sharp diagonal, while stray locks on his forehead give visual emphasis to his proudly arched brow and heavy-lidded eye. Tura has made a virtue of the youth's physiognomic weaknesses or defects, such as the overbite, thereby transforming an unexceptional countenance into a perfect expression of nobility.

The Metropolitan's painting has sometimes been thought a fragment from a larger composition. However, in 2010 it was carefully examined and x-rayed. It emerged that the vertical extensions right and left were made over the original panel and that remnants of the original painted edges of the portrait were distinguishable. The background had been overpainted in Prussian blue—a pigment not used in the fifteenth century. Removal of this pigment revealed the original azurite background as well as the panel to which an engaged frame had been attached. The intended format was therefore a very narrow picture field—much like that of Pisanello's portraits. Tura, working within this remarkably constricted format, was nonetheless able to create an indelible image of aristocratic aloofness.

The picture reminds us why it was that the profile portrait remained the preferred form at Italian courts for so long and was only gradually replaced by the three-quarter view.

Keith Christiansen 2011." [1]