Flemish Artist active in Paris, 17th Century Portrait of an African Emissary, oil on canvas, 99 x 81 cm, framed Provenance: Collection of Julius Samuel Held (1905–2002), New York; Private collection, France The present work depicts an African man in refined costume and appears to be the work of Flemish hand active in the circles centred around the court at Versailles in the latter half of the seventeenth century. Once attributed to Peter Paul Rubens, the identities of both the sitter and painter still elude modern scholarship, in spite of the picture having long been in the collection of the eminent art historian Julius S. Held, the late director of the Detroit Institute of Arts. Charles Le Brun’s contemporaneous, if now destroyed, Grand Escalier des Ambassades at the Chateau of Versailles also featured portrayals of emissaries from Africa and Asia to Louis XIV, although the register of the current work is less formal. Perhaps based on portrayal from life, the format of the sitter in profile is redolent of the commemorative medals of foreign potentates favoured in preceding centuries, while the size of the present canvas suggests it may have been intended as part of a grand courtly gallery or decorative scheme.