Portrait of a Nobleman with a Hawk

Two gold numbers, 15 and 42, sit on either side of this young man's head, and the line beneath gives his age as 28. Holbein painted him in 1542, the year before his own death, and nobody now knows who he was. The panel is small, about 25 centimetres high, yet every feather of the bird is set down. Its hood is off. He holds the little leather cap up in his bare fingers, while the hawk stands on his gloved fist with a round bell at its foot. The picture belonged to King Charles I of England and later to William III, who was both king of England and stadholder of the Dutch Republic. By 1713 it was at the Dutch palace of Het Loo. The French confiscated it in The Hague in 1795, and it stayed in Paris until 1815.