The idealised, inscrutable character has encouraged various theories about its subject, if the picture is a portrait.
In a 1793 letter to King Stanislaus Augustus of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the painting's owner Michał Kleofas Ogiński identified the rider as "a Cossack on horseback", and the king recognized the subject as a member of the irregular Polish military unit known as Lisowczyk [REF].