Emperor Maximilian I

In February 1508 Maximilian I proclaimed himself Elected Roman Emperor in the cathedral of Trento. He had meant to be crowned by the pope in Rome, but Venice blocked his road south, so he took the title without the journey. The Kunsthistorisches Museum dates this small portrait to about 1508 or 1509 and thinks it was probably painted while he was in the Netherlands.

His face here is unusually soft. Most portraits of Maximilian give him hard, sharply cut features. He also holds a carnation, and that is a puzzle, since a carnation usually marks a betrothal portrait. The museum wonders whether it recalls his second marriage, to Bianca Maria Sforza of Milan in 1494. Long after the emperor's death, Joos van Cleve's workshop was still producing versions of this likeness, and one of them is now in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam.