A portrait drawing of Sir Nicholas Poyntz (c.1510-1556) on pink prepared paper. He is shown bust length in profile to the left, wearing a chain and a hat decorated with badges and a feather. The drawing is largely in coloured chalks, with some black and brown inks and white heightening. The black ink has been used to make a number of amendments, such as enlarging Poyntz's goatee into a fuller beard, and may represent alterations made at a second sitting.

An eighteenth-century inscription (a copy of a mid-sixteenth-century original) at top identifies the sitter as 'N. Poines... Knight.'.

Sir Nicholas Poyntz was a courtier who owned estates in Gloucestershire, and the nephew of Sir John Poyntz who also sat to Holbein (RCIN 912233). Poyntz probably sat to Holbein for this drawing in 1535, the year inscribed on early copies of the portrait and in which he hosted Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn during a progress around the west of England. Poyntz is one of the few siters shown by Holbein in strict profile and it has been convincingly suggested that this reflects the influence of classical coins and medals (see Susan Foister, Holbein and England, 2004, pp. 102 and 108–9).