between 20 December 1525 and 20 January 1526. He is buried in the cemetery of the almshouse of the Church of the Holy Spirit, Tallinn (). Works by Michael Sittow The name of Michael Sittow was nearly unknown for centuries, until in 1914 Max J. Friedländer put forward a hypothesis that Master Michiel, court painter of Queen Isabella, is the author of the diptych discovered near Burgos, depicting the Virgin and Child on one side and a Knight of the Order of Calatrava on the other. In subsequent decades scholars put together a picture of Master Michiel's career in Spain, the Netherlands and in Denmark, but it was not until 1940 that Estonian-Danish historian Paul Johansen identified the mysterious Master Michiel as Michael Sittow from Reval. Michael Sittow specialized mainly in small devotional works and portraits, which sometimes project a melancholy mood. His style is heavily influenced by his teacher Hans Memling and also show influence of the elegance found in portraits by Jean Perréal. Sittow used translucent layers of paint to achieve highly refined and subdued color harmonies, combined with light effects and sensitivity to texture. E. P. Richardson described Sittow's work "/../an artist somewhat like Van Dyck in a later epoch; a brilliant painter of religious subjects, but of outstanding qualities as a portrait painter. His portraits are among the finest of their time, vivid, candid, crisply elegant and reserved." Few surviving paintings can be attributed to Sittow with certainty, and there are many problems of attribution around his work. Though his biography is well documented, the only works that can be attributed to him with certainty are two rather atypical very small panels from a large series mostly by Juan de Flandes for Queen Isabella. The attributions of both the portrait (today in Washington, D.C.) called Don Diego de Guevara (d. Brussels 1520, a nobleman whose family came from Santander in northern Spain; valued member of the Habsburg court in Burgundy), and the painting of the Virgin and Child which together with it once formed a diptych, are nearly certain, as Diego's illegitimate son Felipe de Guevara mentions his father's portrait by Sittow. Most of Sittow's paintings are not signed and dated – the only painting that can be dated with certainty is the portrait of Christian II of Denmark. There are more than thirty works attributed to Michael Sittow, however, most of them have not been