Portrait of a Man (Thomas Stahel?)

The letter in this man's hand once gave him the wrong name. It is addressed to Hieronymus Kraffter, a merchant of Augsburg, and for a long time the portrait was catalogued as Kraffter himself. Other details point elsewhere. The initials T.S. and a family coat of arms on the column have led scholars to Thomas Stahel, or Stachel, another Augsburg merchant who played a large part in the life of his city, and the Louvre now gives that name with a question mark.

Augsburg's great trading houses did much of their business through Venice, and in these years Bordone painted several German merchants. Some scholars think he even travelled to Augsburg in the early 1540s. This canvas is dated 1540. The sitter wears a black gown lined with fur and sits at a table with his writing things, the letter open in his hand. The picture later belonged to the banker Everhard Jabach in Paris, and Louis XIV bought it from him in 1662.