My Final Argument that the Portrait of an Unknown Fashion Fantastico in North Carolina Depicts the Privateer Sir Thomas Cavendish
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Above: Unknown Gent (left, NCMA 67.13.4) & Sir Thomas Cavendish (right, image via Alamy.com) This distinguished-looking gent, decked out in a fabulous gold-leaf fleur-de-lis doublet, lives anonymously inside the North Carolina Museum of Art, where his keepers refer to him affectionately as "Mr. Fancy Pants." To my eye, the sitter bears an uncanny resemblance to a number of confirmed portraits of Sir Thomas Cavendish, the English privateer who claimed to have burned over a hundred Spanish ships. Cavendish, an aristocrat known as "the Navigator," was the third man to ever circumnavigate the globe. I'm convinced the portrait does depict Cavendish, and this post will attempt to present the evidence via an examination of the portrait's provenance, costume, pigments, and also the impresa (or visual riddle) posed by the enigmatic thunderstorms painted in the upper-left-hand corner.
My Final Argument that the Portrait of an Unknown Fashion Fantastico in North Carolina Depicts the Privateer Sir Thomas Cavendish
My Final Argument that the Portrait of an…
My Final Argument that the Portrait of an Unknown Fashion Fantastico in North Carolina Depicts the Privateer Sir Thomas Cavendish
Above: Unknown Gent (left, NCMA 67.13.4) & Sir Thomas Cavendish (right, image via Alamy.com) This distinguished-looking gent, decked out in a fabulous gold-leaf fleur-de-lis doublet, lives anonymously inside the North Carolina Museum of Art, where his keepers refer to him affectionately as "Mr. Fancy Pants." To my eye, the sitter bears an uncanny resemblance to a number of confirmed portraits of Sir Thomas Cavendish, the English privateer who claimed to have burned over a hundred Spanish ships. Cavendish, an aristocrat known as "the Navigator," was the third man to ever circumnavigate the globe. I'm convinced the portrait does depict Cavendish, and this post will attempt to present the evidence via an examination of the portrait's provenance, costume, pigments, and also the impresa (or visual riddle) posed by the enigmatic thunderstorms painted in the upper-left-hand corner.