French, 'Portrait of a Young Man', 1640s

This portrait raises all the questions usually prompted by an unidentified sitter: who is this person, where is he, how old is he? The dark background gives us no information as to his whereabouts. Against it, the young man’s hair shines deep auburn, falling in waves down to his collar, which is edged with fine lace. His white shirt puffs out through the slashing in his sleeve and two white tassels hang on his chest over the tiny buttons of his jacket.

There’s no doubt that this man dressed up to have his portrait painted, but his clothes suggest that he’s not short of money nor is he disinterested in the latest fashions, whatever he might have worn normally. His blue eyes, turned slightly to the right, look out into the distance, though the focus of his gaze is perhaps a little uneven. His features are fairly heavy – arched brows, a low forehead and a cleft chin – but they are youthful and still a little unformed, and his moustache struggles to make itself seen.

When this work entered the National Gallery’s collection in 1899, it was described as a self-portrait of the Dutch artist Karel Dujardin, thanks in part to a signature on the left of the picture, level with the young man’s shoulder. However, this signature turned out to be false and was removed during conservation treatment in the early 1980s. It has since been suggested that the portrait is by a seventeenth-century French artist, but a firm attribution remains elusive.

X-ray images taken of the painting throw up another conundrum. They show a second head directly beside that of the young man: a woman wearing a low-necked dress. It’s almost as if the two faces are joined at the centre and look in opposite directions. Careful scrutiny reveals a third head a little above the others, but far less distinct; it has been suggested that this is a first attempt at the portrait we see now. But most evocative are the swirls of paint now invisible under the black background, whose pink and white colour were confirmed by cross-sections. These were probably made by the artist wiping excess paint from his brush onto the canvas, giving us a very real connection to this anonymous maker’s working practice.