Portrait of a Man

Van Mieris made his name with small scenes of daily life, so a plain portrait like this one, painted in 1663, is the less familiar side of his work. Here there is no story and no setting to speak of, only a man turned toward the light against a dark ground, dressed with restraint. The same jeweller's patience that he spent on satin and glass goes instead into a face, the skin and the fall of hair built up in strokes too fine to see. We do not know who the sitter was. What survives is the likeness itself, held at the small, close scale he preferred.