A Man aged 38

Lucas van Leyden painted this Portrait of a Man Aged 38 around 1521, a precisely dated portrait that exemplifies his mature portrait style combining psychological penetration with exact physiognomic observation. The inscription giving the sitter's age—a common practice in northern European portraiture that dated both the portrait and the sitter's life—created a memorial dimension connecting the frozen moment of the portrait to the ongoing flow of time. Lucas's characteristic attention to the specific quality of each face—the particular set of the eyes, the specific character of the nose and mouth, the texture of skin—gives his portraits a documentary quality unusual in his period. The direct gaze, the plain background, and the careful attention to costume create a format of psychological directness that anticipated Dutch seventeenth-century portraiture.

The portrait demonstrates Lucas's ability to convey character through subtle observation of facial features and expression. The tight framing and neutral background focus attention on the sitter's face, rendered with the precision of an engraver.