Dr. Pozzi at Home

The aesthetic and charismatic Dr Pozzi was painted around the age of 35, but the composition departs markedly from the usual formal academic portraits of medical doctors in sombre professional clothing.

Pozzi is depicted standing informally "at home", dressed in a voluminous full-length bright scarlet robe de chambre, tied with a red cord at the waist with provocatively dangling tassel.

The dominant colour may be a reference to the blood of his patients spilled in his professional activities as a surgeon, against which the hands and face of the bearded young doctor stand out, and the white ruffles of his shirt peeking out at the neck and wrists.

The attention paid to his hands compliments his surgical skill, but also alludes to the sensuality of man who insisted on performing intimate manual examinations of his female patients.

An exhibition which included the painting in 2015, at the National Portrait Gallery, London and later that year at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, was the trigger for the 2019 book by Julian Barnes, The Man in the Red Coat.