Portrait of a Man, Possibly Jean de Langeac (died 1541), Bishop of Limoges by http://www.wikidata.org/.well-known/genid/8969a5a84ec7fed8755b8fc5ead369b2

This is "Portrait of a Man, Possibly Jean de Langeac," painted around 1539 by a follower of Corneille de Lyon. The sitter is thought by some scholars to be Jean de Langeac, who served as Bishop of Limoges until his death in 1541.

Let your eye settle on the hourglass at the far left of the table. In 16th-century portraiture, this was a memento mori, a common device meant to remind the sitter, and you, that time is finite. The books, the inkwell, and the open ledger all speak to a life of active scholarship and administration, but the hourglass places that activity against a larger clock.

The painter used strong chiaroscuro, pulling the sitter's face and hands forward from an almost black void of robe and curtain. The technique isolates the eyes and the long white beard, making the calm, weathered expression feel immediate, even intimate, across nearly five hundred years.

Jean de Langeac died only two years after this likeness was made. The sand was, in truth, nearly out. And yet his eyes still hold ours, steady and unafraid.