Portrait de Jeremias de Decker

Rembrandt painted this in 1666, and the sitter, Jeremias de Decker, was a Dutch poet and a friend who had publicly defended him in verse while his reputation and finances were sinking. De Decker admired the painter enough to plan a set of poems to sit beside his pictures. He never wrote them, because he died that same year, so this quiet, dark portrait is close to a farewell between two men near the end. By now Rembrandt had been through bankruptcy and the loss of his house and his collection, and his late manner is all here, the plain brown ground, the loosely worked paint, the light gathered on the face and the folded hands and nothing wasted on show. Catherine the Great bought it for the Hermitage in 1781.