The Duisburg merchant Dirck Tybis

The Duisburg merchant Dirck Tybis was painted by Holbein in 1533 during his second English stay, part of the series of German Hanseatic merchants trading in London that became one of his most significant portrait commissions. The Steelyard, London's Hanseatic trading house, provided Holbein with a community of wealthy German merchants who wanted portraits in the Flemish manner — a tradition they knew from Bruges and Antwerp. Holbein's Hanseatic portraits are among his most inventive: less constrained by the rigid protocols of English court portraiture, they show merchants who read books, handle accounts, and inhabit a world of international commerce. Tybis is presented with the composed confidence of a man whose identity rests on competence rather than birth.

The merchant is surrounded by the tools of his trade, rendered with Holbein's meticulous attention to material objects. The portrait combines individual likeness with a visual inventory of mercantile life.