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
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This is not a self portrait as was once supposed. It has been suggested that the painting is the ' Portrait of a Gentleman' (M. le Texier) exhibited by Ducreux at the Royal Academy, London, in 1791. ...

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. ...

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
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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'. ...

The identification of the sitter, Paul, Sire d' Andouins, Vicomte de Louvigny (1520?
- 1562), is based on what seems to be
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The portrait is greatly influenced by Leonardo da Vinci. The identification of the sitter is traditional. The scroll identifies him as 20 years old; Francesco was alive in 1507 & died in 1551. The cryptic monogram, apparently composed of the letters AMPRF, has been taken to mean Am (brosius) Pr (eda) Fecit
- ' Ambrogio de Predis made this'
- but Predis painted in a different style, making this interpretation unlikely.

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