Portrait of a Man

Hugo van der Goes, who created the famous Portinari Altarpiece for the Medici agent in Bruges, which profoundly influenced Florentine painters when it arrived in Florence around 1483, created this work around 1480, now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Portrait painting emerged as a major genre during the fifteenth century, reflecting the growing emphasis on individual identity and the secular confidence of the merchant and aristocratic classes.

The portrait employs the three-quarter view that became standard in fifteenth-century portraiture, allowing for both physiognomic specificity and psychological depth in the rendering of the sitter's features.