Portrait of Steven van Herwijck (c.1530-1565/67)

The man at the table made medals. Steven van Herwijck came from Utrecht, as Mor did, and worked as a goldsmith and medallist in Antwerp and beyond. The inscription gives his age as 35 and the year as 1564. Mor shows him with one hand on his hip, the other pointing at pieces of gold jewellery on the table.

In 1562 Van Herwijck had crossed to England and made some of the first portrait medals of private people there. In 1565 he went back to London and struck a medal of Queen Elizabeth I. A single example is known, dug up in a ploughed field in 1962 and now in the National Portrait Gallery in London. He died in London by 1567. His portrait later belonged to Sir Peter Lely, the court painter of Charles II, then to the Dutch stadholder William V, and it has been in the Mauritshuis since 1822.