Bildnis eines Mannes

Bruges in the 1470s was where a good deal of northern Europe's money changed hands. The Medici kept a branch office there, Italian and Spanish merchants kept houses, and a new kind of small painting served them, a head on a panel you could carry home or send on ahead of you. Memling ran the busiest workshop in the city and turned these out steadily. This one has no name attached to it. The museum in Brussels lists him simply as a man, with no coat of arms and no inscription to go on, and dates the panel to just after 1472. It was bought at a Brussels auction in 1856 out of a Bruges collection, and the back of the oak board carries a wax seal stamped with the letters H and S.