Portrait of Cornelis Claeszoon Anslo and his wife Aaltje Schouten

In 1641 the Amsterdam poet Joost van den Vondel wrote four lines addressed to Rembrandt. Paint Cornelis's voice, he told him, because the visible part of the man is the least of him, and if you want to see Anslo you have to hear him. Cornelis Anslo was a wealthy cloth merchant and a preacher of the Waterlander Mennonites, known to the city by his sermons. That same year Rembrandt also etched his portrait, and scholars still cannot say whether Vondel's lines were meant for the etching or for this canvas. Here Anslo turns away from a huge open book on a lectern, the brightest spot in the picture, mouth open, his left hand held out palm up with the index finger raised. The museum calls that gesture the centre of the whole composition. His wife Aeltje listens in profile, a crumpled white handkerchief in her lap, and neither of them looks out at us. In England, before the Berlin museum director Wilhelm von Bode bought it from Lord Ashburnham in 1894, the painting went by the title Anslo comforting a widow.