Anthonis Mor, 'Portrait of a Man', probably early 1560s

Although damaged, we can tell that this is an original work by Anthonis Mor. His sitters are usually lit from above and the left; their noses are narrow but have deep shadows and the eyes are too widely spaced.

We don‘t know the identity of the sitter, although the painting was once thought to be a self portrait. Although the clothes, haircut and beard are similar to those in Mor’s self portrait in the Uffizi, Florence, there is no real resemblance between the two faces: the man could simply have been from the same social class as Mor. The cut of his hair, and the long beard with very long moustache, suggest a date in the early 1560s, after Mor’s return from one of his trips to Spain.

Across the background on the left of the man’s collar is a Latin inscription: A Morro f(e?c?)[it]. This covers, and may be an attempt to preserve, an earlier, damaged signature which probably read ’Morus‘ rather than ’Morro‘. Mor signed some of his portraits in this unusual place, including his Mary Tudor (Prado, Madrid). ’Morro‘ could be a misunderstanding of ’Morus'.

Mor was renowned for painting very fast: his Portrait of Hubert Goltzius (Musée royaux des Beaux-Arts, Brussels) is supposed to have been painted, without any preliminary drawing, in under an hour. This picture may have resulted from a similar swift sitting. Infrared reflectography does not reveal any underdrawing, and the original paint is rather thin and has been applied very quickly, with great economy and skill.