Portrait of a Young Man of the Fonseca Family

The Master of Portraits of Princes's Portrait of a Young Man of the Fonseca Family, painted around 1490 and now in Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam, depicts a young member of the Portuguese-Spanish Fonseca family — a significant noble family with branches in both Portugal and Castile who played important roles in the church and in the Spanish overseas expansion of this period. The Fonseca family's connections with the Burgundian-Netherlandish world through the Habsburg alliance explain the commission of this portrait from a court painter of the Low Countries.

Oil on panel with the characteristic three-quarter view that Flemish portraiture had made standard for aristocratic images. The young man's features are rendered with precise individual likeness. Costume and jewelry denote social status.