The elder Holbein exposes the Augsburg patrician’s frivolous character in a highly perceptive manner. This candidness apparently did not present a problem, for the work served to announce the cavalier’s marriageability, as is indicated by the carnations. Yet he did not depend solely on flowers and expensive clothing – a beret swathed with velvet ribbons, a brocade doublet and a silken shirt embroidered with gold. Three inscriptions, no less, point out his merits; the one on the whistle, for example, translates as “he suffers no hardship”. The massive advertising campaign was successful: a companion piece in a private collection, presumably executed at a somewhat later date, shows Mr. Weiss’s wife.