Portrait of a Nobleman

French 16th Century

National Gallery of Art

Shown from the chest up, a pale-skinned man wearing a ruffled collar and ornately decorated doublet looks at us from the corners of his eyes in this vertical portrait painting. His shoulders and face angle to our left, but he gazes steadily our way with bright blue eyes under low, thin brows. He has a straight nose with a rounded tip, and his coral-pink lips are closed under a faint suggestion of a mustache and perhaps a beard. His short brown hair is brushed back from his high forehead, and his white collar curls in figure eights high along his chin and up the back of his neck. His doublet is brown patterned with gold horizontal stripes lined with silver zig-zags. Flower-shaped buttons lead down the front of his doublet from a high collar, and a long gold chain falls out of view below the bottom edge of the painting. His ivory-white sleeves have slashes in rows of alternating diagonals separated by gold embroidery. The background is dark ash brown.