The humanist, poet and biographer Giovanni della Casa (1503-56) is shown bust-length, facing to the front. He has short black hair and an ample beard. He is wearing a patterned black coat and holding a small red book to his breast with his right hand. After studying law in Florence and Padua (where he became a close frined of Pietro Bembo) Della Casa settled in Rome and was employed in the service of Pope Paul III and Paul IV in various administrative posts. He is best known as the author of Il Galatheo (1551-5), the most important book of manners after Castiglione's Il Cortegiano.

This is a variant of a portrait in the Kunsthistoriches Museum, Vienna, attributed to Francesco Salviati and painted 1535-37; in earlier literature this is described as bearing Giovanni della Casa's name on the back of the panel but it is not there now. The identity of the sitter in the Royal Collection portrait is not in doubt; both pictures may be compared with an inscribed portrait in the Uffizi series in which Della Casa is dressed as a Monsignore (his title from c.1537-8). In Pontormo's portrait of Giovanni della Casa of 1541-4 (National Gallery of Art, Washington), he has a fuller beard and striking red hair.

The painting appears in Pyne's illustrated 'Royal Residences' of 1819, hanging in Queen Caroline's Drawing Room at Kensington Palace (RCIN 922151).