Il mercante Georg Gisze

When Holbein came back to London in 1532, his old English patrons were mostly gone, so he found new work among the German merchants of the Steelyard, a walled trading colony on the north bank of the Thames run by the Hanseatic League under its own rules. Georg Gisze, about 34 and from Danzig, managed his family's office there. This was probably the first portrait Holbein painted on his return, and likely meant as a gift for his bride-to-be. Look how much of the trade is packed around him: the scales, the ledgers, the seal, the letters pinned to the wall, one addressed to him in the counting house. The pink carnations in the glass vase were a token of betrothal.