Portrait of Jasper Schade van Westrum

On 7 August 1645 an uncle wrote to young Jasper Schade in Utrecht, warning him about his tailor's bills. One suit under discussion was to cost 300 francs, about three quarters of what a skilled craftsman earned in a year. That same year Schade, 22 and from one of Utrecht's patrician families, sat for Frans Hals. He is dressed for the part, in a jacket of black and gold brocade with slashed sleeves and a hat set at an angle with a gold-coloured bow. Hals painted the brocade in loose, fast strokes, wet paint into wet paint. A few years later Schade built a country house near Utrecht called Zandbergen, and the portrait went up over the door of its main room. It stayed there while the house changed hands nine times, and legend said the house would fall down if the picture were taken away. When a buyer finally removed it in the 1860s, he had a copy painted to hang in its place.