Master of the View of St Gudula, 'Portrait of a Young Man', probably early 1480s

We are looking through an arched window of a brick house at a well-dressed young man. He holds a heart-shaped book; a pen case and inkwell, tied together with red tapes, sit on the window ledge. This tiny painting was possibly once part of a diptych (a painting made of two parts). The young man may be at his devotions, and might originally have been gazing at a religious image in the missing left wing.

There are no obvious indications who the sitter was. He may have been a scribe, though clearly – considering his clothes and jewellery – an affluent one. The book was probably a Book of Hours. A few heart-shaped books do survive from the Middle Ages, some containing love songs but others with devotional texts. The page layout and numerous red and blue initials here suggest the latter.

Behind the sitter we see the church of Our Lady of the Zavel and a view across the Zavel cemetery towards the walls of Brussels. This is one of the earliest known views of the city and an early example of the relatively exact rendering of a recognisable place. Beside the sitter’s head is a gateway into the street, blocked by a large stone (often used in Netherlandish graveyards to prevent animals entering). In the street behind is a stone cistern for watering animals and fighting fires, probably the one which once stood between the two Coudenberg Gates. In the background the city’s outer walls are shown from within: we can see the arches which carry the walkway along the inside of the battlements.

The church on the left, built by the Great Confraternity of Crossbowmen, was under construction throughout the fifteenth century. We are looking at the church from the south. We see the east end, which would have been built first, the south transept and the first bay of the nave, apparently without aisles. The nave was finished in 1435 but the aisles were not begun until after 1494 and the south portal, shown in this picture, was not completed until the nineteenth century. In the underdrawing the building programme seems even less advanced as the left wall of the transept looks unfinished, whereas in the painting the building is more nearly complete.

The landscape must have been of some importance to the sitter. It is possible that the house on the right belonged to Robert Cottereau, an important official in the service of the house of Burgundy, whose descendants perhaps owned a property in that location in the sixteenth century. The sitter is possibly a member of Robert’s family or household, perhaps one of his sons. The most likely candidate is his son Phillippe, whose professional skills gained him the position of Keeper of the Charters in 1484.

This artist seems to have specialised in topographically exact landscapes. This portrait is closely related to three other paintings: a very similar, slightly earlier portrait of a different young man in almost identical dress (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York) and two Marriages of the Virgin (Museum Catharijneconvent, Utrecht; Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, Brussels) which have similar backgrounds.