Retrato de un hombre con chaqueta gris amarillento

Hals painted this panel in 1633, in the middle of his busiest years in Haarlem. The sitter has never been identified. He is turned to the right in a floppy hat and a pale jacket, looking back out at us, and a companion panel of a man in black suggests the two were made as a pair for one particular room. The support is oak, about 25 centimetres high, which is small even for a cabinet portrait. A century later the picture was hanging in a castle in Bohemia. In 1741 the Elector of Saxony bought the Wallenstein collection at Dux and had it carted to Dresden, and the little Hals came with it, into a gallery that 13 years later would buy Raphael's Sistine Madonna.