Portrait of a man with gloves in hand

Rembrandt painted this sober gentleman in 1648, the year the Dutch finally won what they had been fighting Spain for over eighty years, formal recognition of their independence, signed that spring at Munster. Amsterdam was rich and settling into peace, and its merchants wanted portraits that showed steadiness rather than swagger. This one holds a pair of gloves and looks out from a dark ground, dressed in plain black with a white collar. The panel has suffered over the centuries. The face has been rubbed thin and the hand largely repainted, so what you read as Rembrandt's touch is partly a restorer's.