Portrait of een geestelijke (twijfelachtig geïdentificeerd als Jean Carondelet)

This portrait of a cleric, doubtfully identified as Jean Carondelet, was painted around 1525 and is now in Birmingham’s Barber Institute of Fine Arts. Carondelet was Archbishop of Palermo and a powerful ecclesiastical politician in the service of Charles V, and if the identification is correct, the portrait documents a major figure in the Habsburg administration of the Netherlands. The tentative attribution adds art historical complexity to an accomplished work.

The cleric’s vestments are rendered with the textile precision characteristic of Netherlandish painting, while the face’s modeling shows the softer, more atmospheric approach of Metsys’s late career.