Self-Portrait

Around 1669 Bol painted himself in a gown of gold-patterned silk under a red velvet cloak, and the museum identifies the gown as Japanese. Such robes reached Amsterdam through the Dutch East India Company. The shogun presented them to the Company's men on their yearly visit to his court in Edo, and in the Republic they became a prized sign of a man of the world. Bol rests his arm on a sculpted Cupid who has fallen asleep over his quiver of arrows. The museum links the picture to his marriage that year to Anna van Erckel, a rich widow and one of his earliest patrons, and the original carved frame carries the idea further. Its gilded sunflowers follow the sun the way a lover follows the beloved.