Apart from the great sensitivity with which Isaacsz. has captured the sitter’s fine features, and the bravura skill with which he has rendered the differing textures and materials of the costume, perhaps the greatest virtuosity is found in the brilliantly detailed weapons and sword-belt. The exceptionally fine rapier and its companion dagger would have been made in Italy and are both exquisitely decorated and embellished with gold. They are of the very highest quality and would have been highly expensive to purchase. Their cost would have lain not merely in the precious metal employed in their decoration, but in the many hours of skilled and patient labour to create them. The ornamental and figurative designs used would have been inspired by the Mannerist pattern-books of the late sixteenth century, skillfully adapted to the flowing forms of the elegant hilts and pommels of both the rapier and matching dagger. Such pieces were prized as a form of masculine jewellery as much as they were weaponry, and the emphasis given to them here clearly reflects the sitter’s wealth and status. Below his fine ruff he wears a protective steel gorget over a padded buff jacket called a ‘gambeson’ or ‘arming doublet’, fastened together by a chain. The thick buff coat, likely made of ox hide, is deceivingly simple, but this is no regular militia man. Draped over his left shoulder is a red silk sash elaborately embroidered with gold and blue thread and at his side is depicted a pot helmet with a decorated rib.

Pieter Isaacsz. (1569-1625) was Danish-born but of Dutch descent, and due to the nature of his father’s profession as art agent for King Frederik II of Denmark, and to the Danish nobility, the Isaacsz. family moved constantly between Holland and Denmark before settling in Amsterdam in 1581. There, Isaacsz attended school before starting his apprenticeship with Cornelis Ketel and later with Hans von Aachen.[3] In 1608 he travelled to Copenhagen and took over his father’s position as an agent for the Danish king. He received several commissions from Christian IV and two of his principal portraits of Christian IV and his Queen, Anna Catherine, are kept at Rosenborg Castle, Copenhagen. He represents one of the more remarkable painters during the so-called Dutch Golden Age, for he was more than just a court painter in the service of King Christian IV of Denmark. His role as court portraitist and his associations with the Dutch state facilitated a simultaneous career as an international art trader.[4] His favourable positioning in Danish courtly circles also made him an appealing candidate as a spy for the Swedish Realm. After years of cunning political meddling from Amsterdam to Rome, Isaascz. returned home to Denmark and subsequently died of the plague.