Portrait of an Unknown Man, aged 56

In 1591 Frans Pourbus was in his early twenties and still working in Antwerp, painting the city's merchants and patricians years before any court sent for him. Three inscriptions give the facts. In the upper corners, in Latin, stand the year 1591 and the sitter's age, in his 56th year. Beneath the age, the painter signs himself Frans Pourbus, son of Frans. The man's own name was never written down. His red hair has gone grey and short, with ginger still in the beard, and fine lines and dark circles mark the eyes. He stands with a hand on his hip, a pose usually reserved for nobility, and holds a kid-leather glove. His wife's portrait, painted as its pair, is now in San Francisco. The two hung together at Pommersfelden, a castle in Franconia, until a sale in 1867 separated them, and at that sale the critic Théophile Thoré-Bürger called this one a masterpiece of truth and expression. It belongs to a private collection and is on loan to the National Gallery.