A Man’s Portrait is a work of Dutch portrait artist and engraver Michiel Jansz. van Mierevelt. Art historians believe he was a predecessor of famous Dutch painter Rembrandt

Before 1583, Michiel Jansz. van Mierevelt lived in Utrecht where he studied under Dutch drawing master Anthonie van Blocklandt. The artist quickly gained recognition as a master of portraiture, and his works pleased both tradesmen and aristocrats. Commissions were entrusted to him by many noblemen, and Mierevelt was a court painter of the House of Nassau-Orange, the ruling dynasty in the Netherlands. His works were valued for the artist’s ability to render individual features of his characters, attention to accessories and elaborate depiction of details.

In 1625, Mierevelt joined a painters’ guild. Later, he opened a school of portraiture in Delft and his own art workshop that produced about 10,000 canvases.

When working on A Man’s Portrait, Mierevelt stuck to traditions of Dutch portraiture of the second half of the 16th century. He used an austere and reserved style to portray his sitter.

The man’s dark clothes are reminiscent of the Regency period. They have extant elements of the medieval Spanish fashion: a cone-shaped cloak and a round white ruff collar called millstone, which lent gravitas to a man’s face. A folk proverb speaks about that piece of clothing: “A Spanish nobleman may be penniless, but he must possess a starched collar”.

It is unknown who the person in the portrait is, therefore, for the viewer, the character’s inner world remains a mystery. As likely as not, the man of the painting was a prince, a duke or a prince-elector. In his works, Mierevelt always emphasized features peculiar to a particular estate, which dominated over individual ones. The painter was authentic in representing the sitter’s expressive face, his glistening eyes and his grand posture.

In the 1920s, the canvas was included in catalogs as A Portrait of an Old Man. At the Tambov Picture Gallery, it was deemed at first to be part of Pavel Stroganov’s collection; however, prior to the 1917 October Revolution, the picture had stayed in the collection of jurist Boris Chicherin at his estate of Karaul in the Tambov Governorate.