A student of the Florentine painter Giovanni da San Giovanni, Jacopo Confortini most likely received his earliest training at the hands of his father, a member of the city’s Accademia del Disegno. He was also influenced by Matteo Rosselli. Though his skill was recognized by 18th-century biographers, Confortini’s contemporaries did not include him in their histories of Florentine painting, and thus his drawings and paintings have been rediscovered only recently.

Joining the Accademia del Disegno at the age of 26, Confortini spent his career as a painter of frescoes, mostly of religious subjects, and of altarpieces for monasteries and convents throughout Tuscany. This drawing shows another side of his inventive mind, since the figure is drawn from a secular festival. A compositional drawing preserved in Weimar shows an outdoor meal taking place at center, musicians at left, and this cavalier, his swooping drapery caught by the tip of his sword, looking on at right.