Portrait of a 29-year-old Man

Baldung's Portrait of a 29-year-old Man from 1526 is one of his characteristic inscribed portraits—the sitter's age documented in the composition—that demonstrate the direct, psychologically penetrating approach he brought to commissioned portraiture. The inscription of the sitter's age was a standard practice in German Renaissance portraiture that gave the image documentary precision while implicitly mediating on the relationship between the specific moment of painting and the continuous passage of time. Baldung's portrait style combined the precise physiognomic observation derived from his Dürer formation with an expressive intensity that distinguished his characterizations from more polished Flemish-influenced portraiture. The 1526 date—during the turbulent years of the Peasants' War and Reformation—gives this individual document of a specific person a broader historical resonance.

The portrait combines precise physiognomic observation with Baldung's psychologically intense approach, the sitter rendered with unflinching directness.