Charles de Solier, Sieur de Morette

The man is Charles de Solier, France's ambassador to the court of Henry VIII, and Holbein painted him during his London posting in 1534 and 1535. Just a year earlier Holbein had finished The Ambassadors, with its famous stretched skull, and the diplomat Solier replaced in London, Jean de Dinteville, was one of the two men in that picture. Here there is no allegory at all, only a heavy, watchful envoy in black satin against sea-green damask, his hand resting on a dagger. For a long time nobody was even sure who he was. His name was fixed only in 1903, when a small boxwood model for a medal turned up showing the same face, aged about 50, with his titles carved around it.