Old Man with a Globe

Gerrit Dou painted this old man around 1650 in Leiden, on a wooden panel only about 16 centimetres tall, smaller than a paperback book. He gives the long white beard and the lined face the attention other painters reserved for a full-scale portrait. Nobody has put a name to the sitter, and he may never have been meant as a likeness of anyone in particular. Leiden painters had been making heads of old men like this since the 1620s, studies of age and character that collectors bought for the face alone, and the Dutch called them tronies. Dou kept returning to the type for decades, alongside the window scenes that made his name. The museum's title mentions a terrestrial globe beside the old man, and today it is hard to make out in the dark.