This painting and its companion (MMA 07.245.1) are copies, reduced from full to three-quarter length, of stained-glass portraits after designs by Hans Suess von Kulmbach (born about 1480, died 1521/22) for the Margrafenfenster of 1515 in the church of Saint Sebald, Nuremberg (ill. in Friedrich Winkler, "Hans von Kulmbach," Kulmbach, 1959, pl. 54b).
A pair of full-length copies after the Margrafenfenster portraits were included in the Mme C. Lelong sale, Galerie Georges Petit, Paris, December 8–10, 1902, nos. 8 and 9, as "Portrait d'une dame de qualité" and "Portrait d'un seigneur," German School (both now Charles Allis Art Museum, Milwaukee). A third pair are mentioned by E. Buchner (Thieme-Becker, Leipzig, vol. 22, 1928, p. 93) as in a private collection, Wiesbaden, and the same or another pair are known to have been in the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen und Museen der Stadt Dessau in 1960–61 [see correspondence in archive file]. Bust-length versions of both works were in a sale at Phillips, London, July 4, 2000, no. 180, as Manner of Hans Kulmbach, bought in.
Both sitters wear the Brandenburg Order of the Swan.
