Portrait of a Man

In 1527 Jan van Scorel left Utrecht to get away from the political unrest there, and for the next three years he worked in Haarlem. This man sat for him in 1529. His name is lost, and the museum calls him simply a citizen of Haarlem. The few facts we have are on the frame, the original one in oak. On its lower edge is a painted slip of paper held by a red wax seal, and the Latin on it reads, in the year 1529, his true age 46. He wears a black beret and a black gown lined with brown fur, and his right hand rests on the wide collar. The portrait came down through the Van Foreest family of Nijenburg, a country house at Heiloo in North Holland, and the Rijksmuseum bought it in 1953.