The Latin inscription in the top right corner names the female artist: CATHARINA. FILIA /IOHANNIS DE HEMES/SEN PINGEBAT. 1552. (‘Catharina, daughter of Johannes de Hemessen was painting [it]. 1552.’). This inscription was done over a signature in the same form, though slightly smaller and differently spaced, which is visible in infrared reflectograms. The last two digits of the original date cannot be made out. It is not clear why, when or by whom the signature was replaced.
The sitter was clearly a wealthy man. He wears a short, tight-fitting doublet patterned down the front in grey and slashed to reveal his whitish shirt. The brooches across the slashes are set with red jewels, as are those down his sleeves. His ruffled collar and cuffs are edged in red, and his turned-down collar is white with a red embroidered pattern. His hat has been overpainted, but there seems to be original black beneath. His belt has gold ornaments and his sword too is golden. He wears gold rings on his fingers – one set with a shield, quartered in red and blue – and another hangs from a chain around his neck. In the mid-sixteenth century it was relatively common for people to wear rings on necklaces, possibly as pledges of affection. The black shape behind his arm is a hanging sleeve.
When the painting was bought in 1878 it was claimed that the sitter was Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, but there is no basis for this (although he bears a distant general resemblance to portraits of the emperor). Unless the coat of arms on the ring can be deciphered there are no clues to his identity. His clothes are similar to those worn by Maximilian of Austria in a portrait dated 1550 (Prado, Madrid) so the 1552 date might well be reliable.
The pose – one hand on the hip and the other grasping the hilt of a sword – seems to have been taken from portraits painted at the Habsburg courts in the 1540s. Catharina had already tried a similar pose in a painting dated 1548, formerly at Hodsock Priory near Worksop.
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