Pictures of this type often formed part of a diptych where the other half was the Virgin and Child, thus giving meaning to the man in prayer. Many pictures of this subject were commissioned by the merchant classes all over the Netherlands and German speaking world. Dendrochronology has established that the panel comes from a tree felled in the 1460s which gives a possible early date in the 1480s for this portrait.  Moreover on stylistic grounds, the panel dates from before 1500, and exhibits a clear knowledge of the Bruges school especially the late work of Hans Memling and the early work of Gerard David. No exactly comparable picture seems to be currently known, and the hypothesis proposed here is that the picture could be an early work by Michael Sittow, all of whose currently known works date from the first years of the sixteenth century, even though he is known to have been active much earlier.

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