Portrait of Jan Harmensz. Krul

The name attached to this picture is a guess made more than a century after it was painted. Landgrave Wilhelm VIII of Hesse bought it in 1738 from a Delft collection through an Amsterdam dealer, and at that point it was simply a man in black. Only the Kassel inventory of 1749 calls him Jan Harmensz. Krul, an Amsterdam poet and playwright. The case rests on a likeness to an engraving of Krul made in 1634, the same beard, the same heavy lids, though the broad flat nose does not match. A knee-length portrait on this scale was also a grand format for a writer, and the museum still lists the sitter as only possibly Krul.