POURBUS, Pieter
(b. ca. 1523, Gouda, d. 1584, Brugge)

Portrait of Jan Wyts

1570-75
Oil on oak panel, 51,2 x 39,8 cm
Groeninge Museum, Bruges

The Portrait of Jan Wyts (born in 1528), burgomaster of the Liberty of Bruges, is the finest example of the smooth, precise style of Pieter Pourbus. The portrait was done on the occasion of his second wedding to Margareta van Lichtervelde. It is the pendant of the lost portrait of his wife, the diptych probably dating from the first half of the 1570s.