Portrait Of A Humanist

The man who sat for this portrait by Sebastiano del Piombo (around 1520) is unknown. Some think it may be none other than Leo Africanus:

I, Hasan the son of Muhammad the weigh-master, I, Jean-Leon de Medici, circumcised at the hand of a barber and baptized at the hand of a pope, I am now called the African, but I am not from Africa, nor from Europe, nor from Arabia. I am also called the Granadan, the Fassi, the Zayyati, but I come from no country, from no city, no tribe. I am the son of the road, my country is the caravan, my life the most unexpected of voyages...

From my mouth you will hear Arabic, Turkish, Castilian, Berber, Hebrew, Latin and vulgar Italian, because all tongues and all prayers belong to me. But I belong to none of them. I belong only to God and to the earth, and it is them that I will one day soon return.

~ From Leo Africanus, Amin Maalouf, tr. Peter Sluglett (1986/1988).

The epigram to Maalouf's historical novel is from W. B. Yeats: "Yet do not doubt that I am also Leo Africanus the traveller."