Jan Gossaert (Jean Gossart), Man with a Rosary

A dark-haired man gazes to his right in a picture that must once have formed the right wing of a diptych or triptych. He has not joined his hands in prayer, but his right is placed on his heart and he holds a rosary: he is clearly at his devotions.

In the underdrawing, the line of the chin is drawn well inside its painted contour; Gossart was perhaps trying to flatter his sitter, who evidently had a large nose and a receding chin. We don't know who the sitter is. The only indication of his identity is his clothing, which is unusual but so similar to that of two men in portraits attributed to Jan Mostaert (Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, Brussels; Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool) that all three may have been wearing official dress of some kind. The Brussels sitter has been identified as Abel van Coulster, councillor at the Court or Council of Holland, Zeeland and West Friesland; the Liverpool and London sitters were perhaps also officials of the Council of Holland, or possibly another council.

The asymmetrical architecture behind the man was probably continued in another panel. At least four versions are known of a Virgin and Child in the style of Gossart where the background complements and completes that of this painting (Philadelphia Museum of Art; Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Nuremberg; and two in a private collection in Brussels). They are probably copies of the lost left wing of the diptych or triptych of which this painting was a part. The figures of the Virgin and Child recur, with a different background, in a painting in the Prado, Madrid, clearly by Gossart himself. It once belonged to Philip II of Spain, and appears not to be from a diptych but to have been designed as an independent image. It is difficult to say whether the Prado work was an adaptation by Gossart of his lost image of the Virgin, or vice versa. In either case, they were probably painted at much the same time.

Most art historians believe the picture was painted towards the end of Gossart’s career. The sitter’s clothes seem to include archaic as well as fashionable elements and are difficult to date, though his haircut suggests a date of around 1520.