Un noble polonais

Rembrandt painted this bearded man in a tall fur hat and a heavy fur cape in 1637, probably not a real Polish lord at all but one of the exotic costume types he loved to dress his sitters in that decade. The face is invented character more than portrait. What happened to the panel afterward is its own story. By 1768 it hung in the Hermitage, bought by Catherine the Great, and it stayed in imperial Russia for over 160 years. Then in 1930 the Soviet state, hungry for hard currency, quietly began selling off Hermitage masterpieces, and this one went to the American financier Andrew Mellon in 1931. Mellon kept the purchases secret for years during the Depression. He later gave his collection to found the National Gallery of Art in Washington, where the nobleman has hung since 1937, a gold chain still looped across his cap.