Portrait of Jean de Montfort

The man in this portrait spent his career deciding what money looked like. Jan van Montfort was a sculptor and medallist who in 1613 was made master of the mint for the archdukes Albert and Isabella, the Habsburg rulers of the southern Netherlands. Every coin and commemorative medal struck at their court passed under his authority. Van Dyck painted him around 1628, soon after coming home from several years in Italy to his native Antwerp, where commissions from the city's officials and merchants were keeping him busy. Montfort was in his early sixties by then, and van Dyck shows him plainly, without the tools or coinage of his office, as a public man well used to being looked at.