Portrait of a Gentleman

Antonis Mor was the leading court portraitist of the mid-sixteenth century, a Netherlandish painter who worked for the Habsburg courts of Spain, Portugal and England and who helped carry the angular, punctilious style of his teacher Jan van Scorel across Europe. This signed and dated likeness of 1569, shown half-length against a neutral ground, belongs to the sober, penetrating portraits on which his reputation rests. Its careful modelling and the sitter’s quietly guarded expression give the work something of the air of a state portrait, the genre Mor brought to a rare pitch of accomplishment.