Portrait of a Youth

Giovanni Antonio Boltraffio

National Gallery of Art

The head, shoulders, and chest of a light-skinned boy or young man wearing a black cap and red garment nearly fill this vertical portrait painting. His body is angled slightly to our right, and he looks at us from the corners of his hazel eyes. He has smooth skin, rounded cheeks, faint, thin eyebrows, and a small nose. His full, dark pink lips are closed. He wears a brimless, soft black cap, slightly askew, over long chestnut-brown hair that covers his ears and flows down past his shoulders. Two small, gold, vertical lines accent the front center of his cap near the lower edge. He wears a collarless, crimson-red jacket, with dark brown trim along the edges and at the shoulder. Pleated folds of his ivory-white shirt material puff out from openings at the shoulders and a V at the top of the chest. There is a also brown band around the neck of the white shirt with a pattern of black, knot-like designs. The white shirt also has two rows of delicate black lines where it is pulled through at the shoulders. The boy is lit from our right and above, casting a shadow on his neck and cheek to our left. The background behind him is teal blue.