MASSYS, Quentin
(b. 1465/66, Leuven, d. 1530, Antwerpen)

Portrait of an Old Man

c. 1517
Oil on wood, 48 x 37 cm
Musée Jacquemart-André, Paris

Massys is one of the most important portraitists of the age, thanks above all to his pictures of Erasmus and Pierre Gilles (Petrus Aegidius), the town clerk of Antwerp, which he painted in 1517 and sent as a gift to Thomas More. The Portrait of an Old Man is an historically important work, for it is the first portrait by a Flemish artist to show the sitter in profile, following the Italian model.