Portrait of a man holding a skull

The motto painted beside this man's coat of arms reads "Ita mori", roughly "to die thus", and a second line gives his age as 60. He holds the skull against his body, next to a crisp ruff and lace cuffs that announce his means. The Barber Institute reads the pairing simply: wealth and standing on display, and a reminder that none of it outlasts the bones. Hals painted him in Haarlem around 1611, early in his career and a couple of years after the Dutch Republic agreed a twelve-year truce with Spain. The portrait was one half of a pair. His wife was painted in a matching portrait, and the two were separated for close to two centuries. Hers ended up in the Devonshire collection at Chatsworth House, while his was bought by the Barber Institute in Birmingham in 1938. Despite the arms, nobody has identified the couple. In 2023 the two portraits hung side by side again, in the Frans Hals exhibition at the National Gallery in London.