The support is a vertically grained oak plank, 0.8 cm thick. Dendrochronology has shown that the youngest heartwood ring was formed in 1509. The panel could have been ready for use by 1520, but a date in or after 1534 is more likely. There is an unpainted edge 0.4-0.6 cm wide, and a barbe on all four sides. The unpainted edges are the remains of an integral frame, which has been planed down and probably cut down along the sides. There is a white ground. Infrared reflectography did not reveal any underdrawing, but the X-rays showed that the reserved beard was originally longer and had a different shape (fig. b). The figure is reserved in the blue-green background, which probably consists of azurite with lead white. The face and costume were carefully executed with a great feeling for texture. The red doublet was probably modelled with a rich, dark red (madder?) glaze on a white underpaint.

Good. The painting is slightly abraded in the browns and the beard. The red glazes are rather fragile, and there is an old vertical crack to the right of centre.

…; the dealer T. Harris, London, 1920;¹¹Friedländer on photo, RKD, no. 27581 …; Dr Hans Wendland, Lugano, 1924;²²Friedländer on photo, RKD, no. 27581…; the dealer Galerie Fischer, Luzern, 1924;³³Friedländer on photo, RKD, no. 27581 …; dealer, Galerie Fischer, Luzern, 1924;⁴⁴Friedländer on photo, RKD, no. 27581 from whom to Sir Thomas D. Barlow G.B.F. (1883-1964), London, 1934;⁵⁵Manchester 1968, p. 20, no. 8 his son, Basil Stephen Barlow (1918-91), London;⁶⁶Manchester 1968, p. 20, no. 8 from his heirs on loan to Kenwood House, London, 1998-2003;⁷⁷Filedt Kok/De Winkel 2005, p. 406 from whom, through Simon C. Dickinson Ltd, London, to the dealer R. Noortman, Maastricht, 2004;⁸⁸Filedt Kok/De Winkel 2005, p. 406 from whom, € 600,000, to the museum, with support from the Vereniging Rembrandt, the Prins Bernhard Cultuurfonds, the Mondriaan Stichting, the VSBfonds, the Stichting Rijksmuseum and the BankGiro Loterij, 2005

Object number: SK-A-4986

Credit line: Purchased with the support of the Vereniging Rembrandt, with additional funding from the Prins Bernhard Cultuurfonds, the Mondriaan Stichting, the VSBfonds, the BankGiro Lottery and the Rijksmuseum Fonds

This is the earliest and only individual portrait of a black African to have survived from the late middle ages and the Renaissance. He has a moustache and a forked beard, and his black hair is largely covered by an orange bonnet with a turned-up brim on which there is a gold or silver-gilt pilgrim’s badge of Our Lady of Halle, a town near Brussels that became a place of pilgrimage frequented by the Habsburg rulers of the Low Countries.¹⁶¹⁶Hackenbroch 1996; see also Koldeweij 2006, pp. 55-56. He is wearing a low-cut, deep red doublet and a simple gown over a white shirt. His brown hose is attached to his doublet with double points, the space between them being filled with the white shirt and the codpiece. He is wearing thin white leather gloves, and his right hand rests on the beautifully worked hilt of a sword. The sword itself is held in an embroidered strap with a leather or velvet bag hanging from it which is decorated with pearls and gold thread with inset floral motifs and has a fleur-de-lis worked into it.

The man’s costume was already rather outmoded by the 1520s, with only the short hair and the beard being fashionable at that time. Interestingly, he is not wearing a palrock, a long overgown which would have concealed his hose, the bottom of the white shirt and the codpiece. The fairly simple clothing and the absence of the palrock indicate that the man was not a nobleman but more probably a soldier, while the pilgrim’s badge makes it likely that he was a Christian who moved in the circles around Margaret of Austria (1480-1530) at the Habsburg court in Brussels or Mechelen, or both.¹⁷¹⁷On the man’s clothing and other attributes see Filedt Kok/De Winkel 2005, pp. 381-88, 408-09; Koldeweij 2006, pp. 55-56.

Taking all these factors into account, the historian Van den Boogaart suggested that the man might be Christophle le More, an archer who was a member of Emperor Charles V’s bodyguard. Christophle’s name crops up repeatedly in documents about the retinue of the rulers of the Spanish Netherlands, for the first time as a groom in 1503, and for the last time in 1521, when he was in Aachen as a member of the bodyguard for Charles V’s coronation as emperor.¹⁸¹⁸Van den Boogaart 2005.

The original frame, with the integral panel, was cut from a single oak plank. Although much of the frame was sawn off (there is still a narrow edge around the painted surface), the paint layer is completely intact and the portrait has retained its original dimensions. As far as the type goes, the painting belongs with a number of Flemish portraits of princes and noblemen from the early 16th century. It stands on its own in the group, being the only known portrait of a black individual from this period. Most contemporary depictions of black men in the role of Balthazar in the adoration of the Magi lack individualised features and are fairly stereotype.¹⁹¹⁹See SK-A-671 by Mostaert, and SK-A-2150, attributed to Geertgen tot Sint Jans.

The traditional attribution to Jan Mostaert is confirmed by the similarities in style and technique to portraits and religious works attributed to him.²⁰²⁰Filedt Kok/De Winkel 2005, pp. 403-04. He visited the court of regent Margaret of Austria in Mechelen in early 1521, and may have painted this portrait then. Unfortunately, it has been impossible to discover who commissioned it or why. It is nevertheless likely that it was painted between 1525 and 1530.

The man’s facial features appear to have been copied in the first half of the 16th century in a Flemish portrait of St Maurice, the earliest version of which, now in Vienna (fig. a), came from the collection of Archduke Ferdinand in Ambras.²¹²¹See Pächt in coll. cat. Vienna 1938, no. 691a. In June 2006, Karl Schütz of Vienna referred to this portrait and to a copy after the illustrated version, traditionally called the portrait of St Wenceslaus, in the portrait collection of Archduke Ferdinand in Ambras, also in Vienna; see Kenner 1893, pp. 183-84, no. 238. Another version, with the inscription ‘Charle Magne’, is with the London Society of Antiquaries.

(Jan Piet Filedt Kok)

Friedländer 1921, p. 200; Friedländer X, 1932, p. 123, no. 30; Rotterdam 1936, no. 44; Amsterdam 1958, no. 85 (as c. 1525); Winkler 1959, p. 178; ENP X, 1973, p. 72, no. 30; Hackenbroch 1996, pp. 239-45; Van den Boogaart 2005; Filedt Kok/De Winkel 2005; Lowe 2005; Eichberger in Mechelen 2005, pp. 274, 323-24, no. 135; Koldeweij 2006, pp. 47, 54-56; Filedt Kok in Rotterdam 2008a, pp. 176-78, no. 27

J.P. Filedt Kok, 2010, 'Jan Jansz Mostaert, Portrait of an African Man, Mechelen, c. 1525 - c. 1530', in J.P. Filedt Kok (ed.), Early Netherlandish Paintings, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: https://data.rijksmuseum.nl/20015053