In the early seventeenth century, one of the most influential tastemakers in portraiture was the Italian artist Ottavio Leoni. "In all Rome there was no one who did not have his portrait by Ottavio—whether prince, princess, gentleman, gentlewoman, or person of private rank—and not a house in which some portrait from the hand of the Cavaliere was not to be seen;" so wrote Giovanni Baglione in his "Lives of the Artists" (1642). Executed by Leoni in 1624, as attested by the artist's inscription, the sheet portrays the Genoese nobleman Francesco Centurione, son of Ippolita Spinola and Giorgio Centurione, doge of Genoa between 1621 and 1623. Portrayed with captivating realism, Centurione was ahead of the Papal naval forces of Civitavecchia, and he is wearing here a black vest, animated by a pattern of asymmetrical cuts. Close to the Borghese and Barberini families in Rome, the ambitious Centurione was portrayed by Leoni a second time in 1625, as recorded by a sheet in Florence (Accademia "La Colombaria," inv. 776). (Furio Rinaldi, 2020)