Portrait of a Man

When this round portrait was sold in Vienna in 1879, it went under the name of Antonis Mor, the Netherlandish court portraitist of Philip II of Spain. It later belonged to Albert Figdor, a Viennese banker with an enormous collection, and at the Figdor sale in Berlin in 1930 it was listed simply as Dutch, 1597. Dealers in Amsterdam, Frankfurt and New York handled it next, and one of them listed it with the date 1591.

The date is painted at the left, Anno 1597, and on the right a Latin line says the sitter was 60. His name was never written down. The Mauritshuis bought the panel in 1953, and for more than 40 years it hung without the portrait of a woman that had been painted as its partner.