Портрет Йоханнеса Втенбогарта

The old man in the fur-lined cloak had lived through the closest thing the young Dutch Republic came to civil war. Johannes Wtenbogaert led the Remonstrants, a Protestant faction that lost a bitter religious and political struggle in 1618 and 1619. He had been chaplain to the ruler Prince Maurice, but when the other side won he was driven into years of exile abroad. By 1633, when Rembrandt painted him, he was 76 and back in Amsterdam, and still a figure of moral authority to his followers. One of them, a merchant who admired him, ordered the portrait and hung it at home. Rembrandt had only recently moved to Amsterdam himself and was making his name on likenesses exactly like this, an open book, a searching look, and the skullcap and beard of a learned man.