Portrait of Jean Charles de Cordes

Antwerp in 1618 was nine years into a truce with the Dutch Republic, and its wealthy families were sitting for portraits again. The man on this oak panel was one of them. His identity is not a guess: the back of the panel carries his name and his titles, Jean Charles de Cordes, esquire, lord of Wichelen. A coat of arms was worked into the painting itself and later covered over with grey paint, and X-radiographs taken in Brussels still read the pattern underneath.

Who held the brush is unsettled, and has been since the 18th century. The Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium catalogue the picture under two names at once, Peter Paul Rubens or Anthony van Dyck. It entered the collection in 1874, bought together with its companion piece, the portrait of his wife Jacqueline van Caestre, from the heirs of a Brussels countess.