Portrait of a man in a tall hat

Rembrandt painted this around 1663, in a bad stretch of his own life and of his city. Plague was moving through Amsterdam in those years and would kill tens of thousands. His companion Hendrickje Stoffels died in 1663, most likely of it. He himself was long past his fashionable success, his grand house sold off to pay debts. The man in the tall black hat has lost his name over the centuries, but the fine dark clothes mark him as a well-to-do Amsterdam burgher, probably a merchant. What stayed with Rembrandt through all the trouble was the brush: up close the collar and the face are built from thick, loose, visible strokes that only settle into a person once you step back.