Portrait of Adelberg III of Bärenfels

Most of Baldung's surviving work is religious painting, or his unsettling allegories of death and witchcraft, so this sober portrait sits a little apart. It shows Adelberg von Baerenfels, from an old knightly family that had served Basel for generations and given the city several mayors. Baldung painted him in 1526 on a small fir panel about 60 centimetres tall. The date is worth holding onto. Basel was living the last years of the old church, and within three years it would join the Reformation and clear the images from its churches, the very sort of altarpieces Baldung had made his living on. So here he turns to something plainly secular, the careful likeness of a single Basel man, set down in oil on a plain board of fir.