Cardinal Granvelle's Dwarf

The coat of arms on the hound's red collar was only recognised in 1899. The Belgian art historian Henri Hymans identified it as the arms of Antoine Perrenot de Granvelle, bishop of Arras, chief minister to the emperor Charles V and a future cardinal. That is how the portrait got its name. The man himself remains nameless, one of the dwarfs kept in great households of the 1550s, and Antonis Mor paints him with the care he gave princes: the striped cloak and cap, the gold chain, one hand resting on the dog's collar. The Louvre notes that the dog, with a pointer's head and a mastiff's coat, belongs to a hunting type that no longer exists, probably from Spain. Later the panel belonged to Nicolas Fouquet, Louis XIV's finance minister. After his arrest it was sequestered, and in 1671 it was seized for the royal collection.