Portrait of a gentleman, bust-length, in a fur hat and a fur-trimmed coat

Hans Maler, who was probably a pupil of Bartholomäus Zeitblom, trained and practised in Ulm before moving to southwest Tyrol. He worked predominantly as a portraitist, depicting many wealthy and high-ranking individuals during a remarkably prosperous period of development and expansion for the region, both commercially, politically and artistically. While relatively little is known about his early career, Maler certainly established himself as a key artist of the time. He enjoyed the patronage of the renowned Fugger family, the celebrated Augsburg banking dynasty. Augsburg was a key centre of trade and commerce, with strong links to the Italian peninsula and the Alps. His portraits of Ulrich Fugger the Younger and Anton Fugger can be seen in the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Louvre, respectively. Notably, Maler also worked at the Habsburg Imperial court, which at that time controlled the largest Empire in Europe since Charlemagne. He formed part of an artistic community shaped and encouraged by Archduke Ferdinand I, whose portrait Maler painted in 1524 (Florence, Uffizi), together with that of his wife, Anne of Hungary and Bohemia (Madrid, Museo de arte Thyssen-Bornemisza), a work that Rubens would later copy. Ferdinand I, the younger brother of Charles V (and, from his ascension in 1558, Charles's successor as Holy Roman Emperor), not only promoted new architecture but also exploited developments in printmaking to distribute images to a wider public. His consciousness of the importance of official imagery, in which he followed Charles and their grandfather, Emperor Maximilian I, makes his choice of Maler a particular tribute to the artist's talent for capturing a likeness while simultaneously projecting the aspirations and convictions of the sitter.
The present lot is characteristic of Maler's iconic High Renaissance portraits: the sitter is shown bust-length, in three-quarter view, with his facial features and clothes depicted in fine detail. The diaphanous background is also typical of his portraits, with the sky-blue tones of the paint seemingly evaporating towards the lower edge.