The portrait comes from the collection of the Urbinian dukes and entered Florence in 1631 with the legacy of Vittoria della Rovere.
It was considered a portrait of the Duke of Norfolk, figured in the palazzo Pitti’s inventory as “Portrait of a Young Englishman,” “A Man with Blue Eyes.” The assumption that the portrait of the Ferrara lawyer Ippolito Riminaldi is depicted on the portrait was based on a portrait resemblance to the signature portrait of Rinaldi in the San Luca Gallery in Rome, written, possibly, in Titian’s workshop.
However, the problem can not be considered resolved finally, since the similarity is not very great. Recently, new attempts have been made to identify the model of Titian with various historical characters up to Ottaviano Farnese and Pietro Aretino, but the arguments in favor of these versions are not convincing