Portrait of Johannes Hoornbeek

The inscription at the lower right gives the sitter's age as 27 and the year as 1645. Johannes Hoornbeeck was young for a professor. Born in Haarlem, the town where Hals worked, he had spent four years as pastor to a Reformed congregation across the border in Mülheim, in the Rhineland, and in 1644 the university at Utrecht gave him its chair in theology. Hals painted him a year later. He wears the black gown of an academic and holds a book, his thumb tucked inside to keep his place. Hals put nearly all the light on the face and left the hand as a few quick strokes. In 1651 the engraver Jonas Suyderhoef made a print after the portrait naming Hoornbeeck as a man of Utrecht's church and university. Later printings changed the lettering after he moved to Leiden in 1654.