Portrait of Jan Baptist Houwaert

Half-length portrait in an oval of the Brussels writer, scholar, and politician Jan Baptist Houwaert (1533-1599): a man with a beard and mustache, seen from the right, in armor. Below the oval a coat of arms. Around the oval an ornamental border with an inscription (the name of the sitter and his motto 'hout middel mate') and a woman with a lyre (Musica), a woman with a book (Retorica), a woman with a compass (Geometria), and a woman noting numbers (Arithmetica).