Alongside artists such as Jacopo Pontormo and Rosso Fiorentino, Puligo was at the forefront of the Mannerist movement which swept through sixteenth-century Florence. After training with Ridolfo Ghirlandaio, Puligo became a member of the Compagnia di San Luca in 1525. The majority of his output focused on easel-sized pictures for private devotion, as well as a number of portraits and a small group of altarpieces. His only known signed work is a Portrait of a Man, also dated 1523, in Firle Place, Sussex.

This beautifully preserved painting is an excellent example of Puligo's work and a hallmark example of Florentine Mannerism which took hold in the wake of the High Renaissance. The soft and smokey sfumato effect, the sculptural poses, and the elongated figures with the affected poses so typical of the Mannerist idiom, are all characteristic of his style. The pose of the Christ Child, which recurs in several of his works, including a Madonna and Child and a Holy Family, both in the Pitti Palace, Florence, ultimately derives from Raphael's Madonna della tenda in the Alte Pinakothek, Munich (fig.1). Puligo's paintings, including the present work, have with reason often been mistaken for the work of Andrea del Sarto, who was undoubtedly one of his main inspirations.

This note is based on Dottoressa Elena Capretti's report, a copy of which accompanies the present lot.