One of the basic features of humanism - including the humanism of the Kingdom of Hungary - was its intense interest in ancient culture. Its integral part is also the imperial portrait preserved especially on coins and in busts. Johannes Sambucus, the famous poet, historian and physician, also active as a royal counsellor to the Viennese Imperial Court of Ferdinand I, was not only an object of such renewed interest. On the contrary, he himself initiated a creation of a number of portraits of famous regional personalities. Certainly, his own collection of ancient coins and statues and an extensive library of manuscripts and print of that era, rich in this increasingly popular genre, helped him a great deal. Despite this, Ján Sambucus, a native of Trnava, does not have many of his own authentic portraits. Even for artists of a later period, the portrait of a scholar by Pieter van den Borcht (1535 - 1608) from the second edition of Sambucus "Emblemata"-  a collection of allegorical pictures with comments in the form of lessons and short philosophical treatises (Antwerp 1566) became the most influential. Even Tobias Stimmer (or his student Christoph Murer?) created a woodcut with a portrait of Sambucus according to this source. The work was, however, intended for another collection: the Collection of a German humanist Nicolaus Reusner "Icones sive Imagines virorum liter illustrium ..." includes, according to the practice of that period, a series of portraits of distinguished European personalities from antiquity to the present (Strasbourg, 1587, 1589).
The portrait of Trnava scholar went through a significant reduction compared to its Antwerp template (where the scholar is captured in half-figure and moreover with a dog) and despite the recognizable dependency on the model it also changed its function. The narrative portrait of an academician with several attributes became a representative bust of a courtier; only a title and an inscription below the picture - Medicus, Poëta & Historicus – explain the readers who they are dealing with.
On the FDC, there is one of the illustrations of Sambucus collection "Emblemata".
          
             Dušan Buran