Male portrait

In this panel we see the portrait of an elegantly dressed man holding a crystal glass in his right hand, between his thumb and forefinger. A scroll hanging from a tree to his left tells us the date the painting was made (1548) and the age of the gentlemen (42). The work has a wealth of details, both in the clothes and in the rendering of the landscape. Indicated as the work of Hans Holbein in the donation documents, some scholars later attributed it to Hans Muelich, but now even this attribution has been brought into question and some prefer to talk more generically of a “German painter”.