Portrait of Andries van Hoorn

The small shield in the top corner is how we know who this is. It carries the arms of the Van Hoorn family, and in 1939 a scholar used it to name the sitter as Andries van Hoorn, from one of the rich brewing families of Haarlem. The worn inscription to the right of his head gives his age as 38 and the year as 1638, the summer he married Maria Pietersdr Olycan, whose portrait is the pair to this one. Hals already knew the face. Five years earlier he had painted Van Hoorn among the officers of the St Adrian civic guard, the town militia in which he was a captain, in a large group portrait that still hangs in Haarlem. Van Hoorn held city office for much of his life and was three times burgomaster, one of the mayors of Haarlem.