Object Image

Portrait of a Man holding a Scroll and Gloves

A middle-aged man with a luxuriant beard gazes past us into the distance. He holds a scroll in one hand and lays the other across a pair of brown leather gloves which rest on a table. His black hat has lappets, turned up and fastened to the brim; in cold weather they could have been let down over the ears and tied under the chin.

We don't know who the man is, though a very similar portrait of him, minus the hands, is in the Fine Arts Museum, San Francisco. The clothes and the cut of the beard indicate that this was probably painted in around 1550.

Technical analysis reveals that the right hand and scroll are painted on top of an area that was partially scraped out; the original hand is still ...

probably c. 1550
Oil on limewood
39.7 x 29.5cm
NG947
Image and text © The National Gallery, London, 2024

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