# Derick Berck of Cologne [View the canonical artwork record]() ## Artwork - Artist: [HOLBEIN, Hans the Younger]() - Date: 1501-1550 - Technique: Oil on canvas transferred from panel, 53 x 41 cm ## Commentary According to the inscription on the cloth-covered table, this portrait of a bearded young man was painted in 1536, when the sitter was thirty years old. He holds a letter in his left hand, while a scrap of paper inscribed with a line from Virgil's Aeneid lies nearby. The address on the letter identifies the sitter as Derick Berck, a German merchant who lived and worked at the Steelyard, the London headquarters of the Hanseatic League. Documents show that he was a citizen of Cologne. Notwithstanding its damaged condition, this painting is consistent stylistically and technically with the artist's other Steelyard portraits of the 1530s. ## Related artworks - [Adam and Eve]() - [Apollo and the Muses on Parnassus]() - [Charitas]() - [Charles Brandon]() - [Christ as the True Light]() - [Christina of Denmark, Ducchess of Milan \(detail\)]() - [Christina of Denmark, Ducchess of Milan]() - [Courtier of Henry VIII and his Wife]() - [Darmstadt Madonna \(detail\)]() - [Darmstadt Madonna \(detail\)]() - [Darmstadt Madonna \(detail\)]() - [Darmstadt Madonna \(detail\)]() ## Attribution [Web Gallery of Art]()