Portrait of a Man in Hungarian Costume

Some time in the 1740s, a man sat for Martin van Meytens in the full dress of a Hungarian nobleman. A white fur cap with a black plume and a jewelled clasp, a red cloak lined with dark fur, a sleeve of gold brocade, a thick corded sash, and a hand closing round the hilt of a sabre. In 1741, at the diet in Pressburg, the Hungarian nobles had pledged their life and blood to the young Maria Theresa, then fighting for her inheritance. Who this man was, nobody has managed to establish. In 1783 Christian von Mechel, who catalogued the imperial picture gallery, described the canvas as the painter's own likeness in furs of the Polish kind. The Belvedere finds that unlikely, given the jewels and that deliberate grip on the weapon, and looks for the sitter among the high nobility.