English:
This is a portrait of an unidentified twenty-eight-year-old man, as stated in the inscription. This has given rise to the theory proposed by Gray (1992) and Foister (2006) that he may be Sir Ralph Sadler (1507–1587), a diplomat and administrator whose biographical details indicate close connections with the court of Henry VIII. By the age of fourteen, Sadler resided in the house of Thomas Cromwell, in 1527 he became his secretary, and in 1535 he became clerk of the hanaper in chancery and built his own house in Hackney. Sadler was knighted in 1540 and appointed to the post of principal secretary of state to Henry. His long association with Cromwell led to his brief arrest on 17 January 1541 but six days later he attended a Privy Council meeting, having presumably cleared himself and resuming his post without further difficulties. He continued to serve Henry, as well as Edward VI and Elizabeth I, until his death at the age of eighty. The only other known likenesses of Sadler are his tomb effigy in Standon Church, Hertfordshire, and a full-length portrait showing him holding a hawk on his wrist, which survives only in a schematic copy. Although the MMA portrait and the tomb effigy display certain similarities, the difference of more than fifty years between the two images—one drawn and painted and the other a stone sculpture—makes a reliable determination of the sitter's identity impossible. For now, the identification as Sadler must remain hypothetical. The portrait is based on a drawing by Hans Holbein the Younger in the Royal Collection at Windsor.
[2013; adapted from Ainsworth in Ainsworth and Waterman 2013]
Scholars do not these days attribute it to Holbein, owing to the style of the underdrawing and weaknesses in the execution. Ainsworth (1989) concurs with Held (1949), Rowlands (1985), and Foister (2006) in rejecting the attribution to Holbein himself. Susan Foister believes it to be a workshop portrait painted by an assistant under Holbein's supervision, while John Rowlands believes it is the work of a follower who might have trained under Holbein.