Portrait of an Unknown Artist

The man in this small canvas is shown as a painter, but nobody now knows which one. The Kunstmuseum Basel has held the portrait since 1868 under the plain title of an unknown artist, and the sitter's name had slipped away well before that. What survives is the type: a working painter of around 1700, soberly dressed, seen at half length. Because Huber was in his mid-thirties when he made it, some have wondered whether the face is his own, and 'self-portrait' still survives as an alternative name for the picture. No document settles it. The date, 1703, is one of the few certain things about the work. It is a small canvas, about 52 centimetres tall, the kind of portrait made for a private room rather than a public hall.