Portrait of Philip the Fair, Duke of Burgundy

Around 1500, when this panel was painted, Philip the Fair was in his early twenties and ruled the Burgundian Netherlands. In February of that year his son Charles, the future emperor Charles V, was born in Ghent. Philip himself was the son of the Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I and Mary, Duchess of Burgundy, and he would die in 1506, aged 28. Round his neck hangs the collar of the Order of the Golden Fleece, with the small gold ram's fleece at its end. The Rijksmuseum points out that only the most important nobles and princes could join the order, founded by his great-grandfather in 1430. Older opinions gave the portrait to the Antwerp painter Jacob van Lathem or to the anonymous Master of the Magdalen Legend. The museum has set both names aside and now calls it the work of an unknown painter from the Southern Netherlands.