Support
The wooden support has a thickness of approx. 9 mm and is probably beech.
The wooden support consists of one plank with vertically grains.
The sides of the board are chamfered and the plank has lots of holes from old wood worm attacks. Along the bottom of the panel the chamfer is newer, since the wood appears lighter and the holes from the wood worms are exposed.
A printed piece of paper is glued to the back of the panel (measures 20 x 36 cm). The paper has an old text printed on. The upper left corner of the paper is missing. Around the paper on the back of the panel the wood is painted with a thin black paint.
Ground and Imprimatura
Cf. SEM analysis of the cross section no. 308b, the ground consists of calcium and is probably a chalk ground.
The ground is applied with brush or a scraping iron.
The ground covers the whole panel except the edges of the right, left and upper sides of the panel. The reason why the ground goes all the way to the edge at the bottom of the panel could be that the panel has been shortened by about 1 cm.
The cross sections show an isolation layer, probably oil, underneath the ground.
It seems that there is a light golden layer (imprimatur or oil saturated ground layer) underneath the flesh paint, probably also underneath other parts of the painting.
Underdrawing
There are not many visible underdrawings in the painting. There are some few ones at the transition between the ears and the collar, around the left eye (the eye of the man), nose and hands.
The underdrawing reveals that the ring on the finger wasn’t meant to be in the painting, since the ring is painted on top of the fur coat.
Paint Layers and Gilding
Oil paint on wood.
Under the beard and hair is a black brown underpaint, which is darker in the dark parts of the beard and indicates shadows in the edge between the incarnation and the beard.
Under the fur is a more light brown underpaint. The folds and shadows in the shirt are painted on top of a grey underpaint.
The pigments are grinded finely and there are some few impasto areas (the embroideries in the white shirt).
The colour layers are thinly applied and consist in many areas of several translucent layers.
The background of the painting has been painted over twice (see cross section no. 308b). This overpaint of the background has probably been part of a treatment, to cover up all the cracks and an old damage in the centre of the painting.
The paint layers are built up of separate painted areas, but many places the painted areas are not adjacent to each other. The underpaint is in these areas visible.
After the underpaint was painted the incarnation and shadows were painted on top. Then the background and finally the hat.
The white shirt is painted after the underpaint for the beard and before the fur.
The black coat is painted after the white shirt and the fur, and it is painted up till the hands.
The smaller details as the eyes, brows, beard, fur, shadows, highlights at the hat and the ring on the right finger was painted at the end and they are built up by several paint layers.
The beard and hair is painted with a tiny brush in black, brown and light yellow colours. The light yellow colour is painted wet in wet with the black colour so it appears more transparent.
The fur is painted with a short haired brush.
The stone in the ring could possibly have had a different colour (lighter and more like the background) but whether it is painted over is unknown.
Framing
Narrow gold frame with laminated glass.
Unknown whether it is the original frame.
[Mette Kokkenborg, Statens Museum for Kunst, 2013]
