Portrait of a man

Frans Hals was nearly 80 when he painted this small panel in Haarlem around 1660, and by then his brush was freer than it had ever been. The black coat is laid in with broad, rapid strokes, and the collar is a few flat slabs of white with tassels at the throat. Where he took more care is the face. Small points of light sit in the dark eyes, and the lips look as though they are about to move.

The panel is only 31 centimetres tall, and nobody knows who the man was. His portrait has travelled a long way since. In the 1870s it was in England. It then went to collections in Berlin, Copenhagen and St Louis, Missouri, before the Mauritshuis bought it in 1957.