Netherlandish School circa 1600

This picture is one of five known paintings of its type.  Another hangs in the Queen's collection at Hampton Court, a third is known to be in a Dutch private collection (unpublished), while the two others' current whereabouts are unknown.  The panel in the Queen's collection, which is almost identical to the present picture, was purchased by Henry, Prince of  Wales (1594-1612), who was extremely fond of startling visual effects (see L. Campbell, The Early Flemish Pictures in the Collection of Her Majesty the Queen, Cambridge 1985, p. 131, cat. no. 83, illus. pl. 102). Until the mid-nineteenth century scholars studying the Royal Collection believed that the picture was a portrait of Will Somers, Henry VIII's jester, by Holbein.  However, based on the figure's attire, the picture was dated to the beginning of the second half of the sixteenth century, which postdates Holbein's death in 1543.  The initial attribution to Holbein was most likely due to the fact that this picture seems to fit into the long tradition of court jester portraits, popular in Renaissance and post-Renaissance Europe.  These jesters often became celebrities in their own right, of which Will Somers was one. One particularly famed example is Jean Fouquet's 15th century Portrait of the Buffoon Gonella, now in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna.  However, the present painting contains a humorous element that is not often found in other portraits of buffoons.  It is very likely that this type of panel was intended to be hung in a corridor, in which context the visual pun of the boy attracting the viewer's attention by tapping against the glass of the window, only to mock him for being so credulous, could be fully appreciated.