Maximilian I (1459-1519), Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire

When Maximilian of Habsburg married Mary of Burgundy in 1477, he gained the rich Burgundian Netherlands and a long struggle to hold them. Mary died after a fall from her horse in 1482, and the towns of Flanders resisted his rule for years. Bruges even held him prisoner in 1488. Through that marriage the Netherlands passed to the Habsburgs, and his family still governed them when this portrait was painted in Antwerp around 1530, more than a decade after his death.

The panel is small, about 35 centimetres high. He wears a black cap over pale, shoulder-length hair and holds a single red carnation. The Rijksmuseum gives the portrait to the workshop of Joos van Cleve and rejects the master's own hand. It entered the museum in 1940 as a gift from Mrs Kessler-Hülsmann, whose collection was at Kapelle-op-den-Bos near Mechelen.