Portrait of Sir Thomas Lucy (?)

For more than half a century this small panel was thought to be Dutch. When Adolfo Venturi first catalogued it in 1893, he gave it to Frans van Mieris of Leiden, and the critic Roberto Longhi still agreed in 1928. In 1959 the art historian Paola della Pergola set it beside a portrait of Sir Thomas Lucy, an English gentleman painted by the London portraitist William Larkin, and concluded that this picture was English too, by an unknown master of the early 17th century. That comparison gave the painting its title and its question mark. The museum itself says the man only vaguely resembles Lucy. What can be checked is on the surface: armour studded with gilt rivets, a broad lace collar, long curling hair against a shadowy ground. A split runs down the wood through his cheek, left by an old repair.