French, 'Portrait of a Man', mid-16th century

This small picture could be the ruined remains of a competently painted portrait – it’s in very poor condition, but the near eye has a complex catchlight consisting of at least three brushstrokes.

There are large losses of paint in the upper third, along the top edge and extending into the hat and forehead. The paint surface is badly rubbed, much repainted and obscured by dirt and discoloured varnishes. Thin brown overpaint covers the man’s clothes, hat and background. His jacket was once black and painted with a fine pigment, and his hat seems to have been grey (grey paint is visible in some places through losses in the overpaint). His eyes are grey under greenish overpaint; little or nothing remains of his hair or beard.

The panel is a single board of oak, and it seems not to have been cut down: the ground seems to reach to all four edges. The ground is chalk, with a thin greyish priming. Infrared reflectography does not reveal any underdrawing.

The panel’s wood – oak – was grown in France between 1400 and 1535. Dendrochronological evidence, together with the fashion of the collar and hat and what can be made out of the original shapes of the beard and moustache, suggests the picture was painted in France towards the middle of the sixteenth century.