Portrait of Jakob Omphalius

The man holding the letter was born Jakob Omphal, in Andernach on the Rhine, in 1500. Like many scholars of his generation he gave his surname a classical form, and as Omphalius he published books on law and on Latin style, one of which went through 15 editions. He took his doctorate in law at Toulouse, in France, and in 1537 he became an assessor, one of the judges, at the Imperial Chamber Court in Speyer, the highest court of the Holy Roman Empire. In 1545 he would become chancellor to the Archbishop-Elector of Cologne.

Bruyn painted him in 1538 or 1539 as one half of a hinged pair made for his engagement to Elisabeth Bellinghausen, and the two panels are shown side by side again at the Mauritshuis.

His own panel went through harder times. In 1938 it belonged to the Frankfurt banker and collector Maximilian von Goldschmidt-Rothschild, who was forced by Nazi persecution to sell his collection to the city of Frankfurt, and it was returned to his heirs in 1948.