Portret van Jacob Cornelisz van Oostsanen

Long accepted as the earliest known north Netherlandish self-portrait, this is probably a copy after a lost work. Such portraits illustrate the increasing status of artists. Jacob, whose traditional nickname means ‘son of Cornelis from Oostsanen’, looks directly at us. Behind him is a paper with the date 1533 and his monogram, I W (inverted) v A (‘J[acob] W[ar] v[an] A[msterdam]’).