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There is an inscription near his head, monogrammed and dated 152(?). The last digit of the date is not clearly legible (1 or 4?), but the fact that the panel is oak indicates that the painting must have been carried out during Dürer's trip to the Netherlands. The hypotheses regarding the name of the subject are various. The most frequent are: the one of Lorenz Sterck, an administrator and financial curator of the Brabant and of Antwerp, and that of Jobst Plankfelt, Dürer's innkeeper in Antwerp. These names are frequently suggested since Dürer writes in his diary that he had done oil portraits of them.
It is difficult to imagine an innkeeper who made himself depicted with a scroll in his hand. Whereas it seems much more plausible that the imposing subject characterized by a severe and scrutinizing gaze - clad in a silk shirt, a cloak with a fur collar, and a large beret - corresponds to a tax collector. But whoever the subject is, the portrait is regardless one of the most beautiful and incisive that Dürer ever created. He manages, with an image constrained by such a limited space, to communicate the impression of being in front of a personality of a supremely concentrated energy - and all that by using simple and pale colours, whose effect is unfortunately partly obfuscated by the heavy varnish covering the painting.
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