The Portrait of Folco Portinari is a painting by the German

Germans

The Germans are a Germanic ethnic group native to Central Europe. The English term Germans has referred to the German-speaking population of the Holy Roman Empire since the Late Middle Ages....

  painter Hans Memling

Hans Memling

Hans Memling was a German-born Early Netherlandish painter.-Life and works:Born in Seligenstadt, near Frankfurt in the Middle Rhein region, it is believed that Memling served his apprenticeship at Mainz or Cologne, and later worked in the Netherlands under Rogier van der Weyden...

, dating to c. 1490. It is displayed in the Uffizi Gallery of Florence

Florence

Florence is the capital city of the Italian region of Tuscany and of the province of Florence. It is the most populous city in Tuscany, with approximately 370,000 inhabitants, expanding to over 1.5 million in the metropolitan area....

, Italy

Italy

Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...

.

History

The painting, for a period, was attributed to Antonello da Messina

Antonello da Messina

Antonello da Messina, properly Antonello di Giovanni di Antonio was an Italian painter from Messina, Sicily, active during the Italian Renaissance...

. It is documented for the first time at the Uffizi in 1863, assigned to an anonymous Flemish artist. Later, together with three other paintings in the gallery (Portrait of Benedetto Portinari, Portrait of an Unknown Man in a Landscape and Man with a Letter), the painting was attributed to Memling due to its high quality.

Of the four, the portrait of Folco Portinari is considered the latest one. The identification with Folco Portinari is anyway hypothetical.