Portrait of Joseph Deutz

Joseph Deutz was about 24 when he sat for this in Rome, around 1648. He came from one of the wealthiest merchant families of Amsterdam and was staying in Italy with his brothers, and in Rome he found Michiel Sweerts, a painter from Brussels then working in the city. Sweerts gave him an unusual pose for a portrait of the time. He leans slightly toward us, fingers raised to his chin, his other hand on his hip, and he looks straight out as if he were about to speak. The background is almost black, so the light picks out only his face, the long brown hair and the full white shirtsleeves. The picture stayed with the family. His sister Agneta had it in 1692, and it passed down through relatives until it came to the Rijksmuseum in 1953.