Cheseman falconer to the king, which was an honourable position, the more so because hawking was a sport reserved for the nobility. No wonder, then, that Cheseman was proudly portrayed with his falcon. The hood over the bird’s head served to keep it still. The little bell around its leg helped the hawking party to locate the bird after it had caught its prey.

Holbein’s virtuoso technique is apparent from the smooth rendering of the man’s face and the painstaking depiction of the falcon. Especially well observed are Cheseman’s piercing gaze and the tenderness with which he apparently protects his bird. Such attention to detail enabled Holbein to turn this portrait into a character sketch.

The Mauritshuis is the only museum in the Netherlands to own paintings by Holbein: this portrait of Cheseman and another portrait of a nobleman with a hawk. A third portrait – that of Jane Seymour, one of Henry VIII’s six wives – was probably produced in Holbein’s workshop.

The Holbeins in the Mauritshuis once belonged to the English royal house. Around 1700 the stadholder-king William III of Orange brought them to the Netherlands to decorate his hunting lodge, Het Loo, in Apeldoorn. William – who was both stadholder of the Dutch Republic and king of England – was free to do what he liked with the paintings.

After William’s death, Queen Anne of England demanded to have the paintings back, but the Dutch paid no heed to her claims. Still, they did not dare to sell the paintings when the furnishings of Het Loo were auctioned off in 1713, since the claim was still pending. The paintings remained in the stadholder’s collection and eventually ended up in the Mauritshuis.