TIME has treated no other great painter so harshly Jacapo Pontormo. From the whole last quarter-century of his career only two works in painting remain to us, both in portraiture, which was for him a secondary genre. His loggia frescoes at the Medecian villas of Careggi (1535-36) and Castello (1538-43), as well as the great fresco cycle in the choir of S. Lorenzo (1546-56), have vanished altogether, leaving only Pontormo's ideas remarkable in quality, but no evidence for his powers as a painter; the two tapestries made c.1545-46 from his design for the series meant to hang in the Sala dei Dugento of the Palazzo Vecchio obviously contain no trace of his hand. The reappearance of a painting from this period is thus of some significance, even if what has reappeared is only a fragment of a larger work.

THE commission for Bronzino's portrait of Cosimo I in armour is mentioned by Vasari immediately following his description of the frescoes in the Chapel of Eleonora di Toledo in the Palazzo Vecchio, works datable to 1540-43:

Il signor duca, veduta in queste ed altre opere l'eccllenza di questo pittore, e particolarmente che era suo propio ritarre dal naturale quanto con più diligenzia si può imaginare, fece ritrarre s, che allora era giovane, armato tutto d'arme bianche e con una mano sopra l'elmo. 

There has been considerable confusion (and little consensus) among critics and historians concerning the identity of the picture referred to, its size, the number of replicas made of it, and the authorship of those paintings.