This striking panel portrait depicts a handsome gentleman wearing a white collar and elaborate satin coat with gold trim down the front. The extraordinary costume with its shimmering quality and costly fabrics and lace was an important marker of the wealth and status of the wearer and speaks of the status of the sitter in Dutch society. Details of dress in Dutch formal portraits are usually faithful reflections of the sitter''s own clothing and artists portrayed their clients in the manner set out by the terms of the commission. They were almost always intended to convey the sitter’s social status and rank in society. The expensive fabrics, the attire, and the grand coat-of-arms as seen in the present portrait proclaim to every onlooker that this is a superior being.The portrait depicts Jan van Reynegom (or in French, Jean de Reynegom), an ancestor of current Belgium nobility. The Van Reynegom family were a very rich family of brewers known from the fourteenth century in Gouda,...