It has not so far been possible to make a cast iron attribution for this pleasing portrait, and the name of the subject has been lost to history. Nonetheless, the sitter, who would of course have been much younger than his fashionable perruque suggests, closely resembles those seen in the portraits and conversation pieces of the notable English painter Highmore, active during the first half of the eighteenth century. To us, these questions of identity might seem negligible when compared to the palpable advantages of a fine and sensitive portrait nearly three hundred years old, in remarkable condition and on a canvas that has never been lined, virtues which are all too scarce in early paintings coming onto the market today.