Bust-length image of an old man with fur collar and hat

This work seems to be a portrait drawn from life. However, it is highly uncertain whether this statement – which seems obviously correct according to the preconceived notions of today's viewers – is really correct. Schongauer drew a fairly large number of comparable likenesses, including charming girls and exotic ‘orientals’, whose rather schematic stereotypes as well as elegant contours and brushstroke make them recognizable as fictive compositions deriving from the artist’s fantasy. In our sheet, on the other hand, the coarse strokes of ink of the fur and the folds around the armpits seem so spontaneous and the facial expression so individual that we believe we are looking at a true representation from life; this assumption is contradicted only by the ear, which has been represented from a different point of view than the rest of the image. True portraits were a rarity in the Middle Ages, but began to appear here and there beginning around 1400 […]; by 1475, they were no longer uncommon. However, the wider proliferation of true portraits first began to develop around 1500.