It has been suggested that the sitter is Dr Richard Mead, the famous physician & collector. This identification has not been verified. The date of this work would suggest that the picture was painted in Britain & the sitter is likely to be British. ...

Jacometto specialised in portraits of this format & size & many of his works have reverses inscribed with mottoes as in this work. The inscription on the reverse shows two crossed sprays of myrtle & comesfrom Horace's ' Odes' (1: 13): FELICES TER E ...

The sitter has been described as a Florentine nobleman. The red costume, however, suggests that he may have been Genoese & have held office in the government of that Republic. Sustermans worked in Genoa in 1649. ...

The sitter has not been identified. Tocque was one of the foremost portraitists of his age combining, as here, study of character with attention to his sitter's costume. ...

Formerly attributed to the Flemish painter Enrico Fiammingo (Hendrick van Somer, 1607/15
- 1684), this painting is now thought
...

The bearded sitter, who holds a paper in his left h&, has not been identified. The portrait probably dates from the middle of the 16th century. ...

A much repainted bust-length portrait of an unidentified sitter. It has been attributed to Clouet & to Corneille de Lyon, both 16th-century artists, but the condition of the panel, which is badly rubbed, precludes a firm attribution. ...

The painting is dated 1462 in the simulated carved inscription in the background. It is the earliest dated painting by Bouts & the earliest surviving dated Netherlandish portrait to include a view through a window, although such views were included in Netherlandish paintings with religious subjects. It has been suggested that the sitter's plain style of clothing is connected with the University of Louvain, whose statutes of the time suggest that students dress in 'clerical' garments. Jan van Winckele was made Notary to the Conservator of the Privileges of the University in 1462 & the portrait may have been painted to commemorate this occasion. ...

Several identifications have been proposed but none is entirely satisfactory. A version of the painting in the Uffizi is claimed to represent the poet Jean-Baptiste Rousseau (1670
- 1741). The costume, which seems unusually elaborate, accords for the most
...

The words 'Léal Souvenir' (Loyal Remembrance) are painted on the parapet as though carved into the stone. They may mean that the portrait is an accurate likeness or, conceivably, that it was a posthumous, commemorative likeness. The sitter has not been identified; he is not grandly dressed & is unlikely to be an aristocrat or a cleric. The inscription in Greek letters has been read as ' Tymotheus' (Timothy), but it seems to be a transliteration into Greek script of two words in Latin, 'tum otheos' meaning ' Then God'. What this signifies is not clear. The reverse of the picture is painted in imitation of marble. The translation of the inscription along the bottom of the parapet reads ' Done in the year of Our Lord 1432 on the 10th day of October by Jan van Eyck'. ...