The Scattered Frankapan Heritage – Dürer’s Unknown Man and van Scorel’s Venetian Nobleman

Abstract

Since 1753, the British Museum has housed Albrecht Dürer’s Portrait of an Unknown Man (The British Museum, Department of Prints and Drawings, inv. no. SL 5218.22), which was bequeathed to the museum by Sir Hans Sloane. After the death of the German collector Johann Gottlob von Quandt in 1859, the Portrait of a Venetian Nobleman by Jan van Scorel was initially sold to a private collection in Oldenburg (Grossherzögliche Gemäldegalerie) in 1868, and later acquired by the Oldenburg State Museum (Landesmuseum für Kunst und Kulturgeschichte Oldenburg, inv. no. LMO 15.567) in 1922. Art historians have been studying these works since the 19^th century and have successfully attributed the portraits. However, they have been unable to identify the sitter. Furthermore, the two portraits have not been compared or linked, despite depicting the same individual.