Portrait of Jan Six

By 1654 Rembrandt's finances were sliding toward the bankruptcy that would come two years later, and most patrons wanted their money's worth in polish. Jan Six was not most patrons. He was a wealthy friend, a poet and collector who let the painter do as he liked. So Rembrandt caught him mid-gesture, pausing on his way out the door, drawing a glove onto his left hand. The gold braid on the red coat is just quick broad strokes of paint, the gloves barely described, yet the working right hand is fully alive, its tension visible. Six's descendants still own the picture in Amsterdam, kept in the same family more than 350 years on.