Portrait of a Man

Dutch-born painter Corneille de Lyon employed a limited selection of colors to great effect in this small painting. The textured, green background accentuates the subject’s velvety black outfit, lace collar, pale skin, and bristly beard. Corneille specialized in this stylized type of small, finely painted precious portraiture, working primarily for the court and bourgeois elite of 16th-century Lyon, France, where he lived most of his life. The sitter’s exaggerated proportions direct the viewer’s attention to his head and thus to his quiet yet self-assured expression. His confident posture and expensive clothes, along with the exceptional reputation of his portraitist, speak to his high social status.