1606-1669
This picture is dated 1644, a year or so later than the famous Night Watch, the style of which it approaches. The pose of the sitter in our picture is similar to that of Banning Cocq, the central figure of that famous work, particularly in the posture of the hand held out in front of the figure. I t is an effort to secure relief and depth in the work, “a desire to produce something startling, something as yet unachieved in portraiture,” says Dr. Valentiner.
Under the title Le Connétable de Bourbon, Smith in his Catalogue Raisonné describes our picture when it was in the collection of Lord Radstock, in London, in 1826. I t was sold in London in 1881 for 856 pounds, io shillings, and has passed through the collections of E. Secretan of Paris and Adolphe Thiem of San Remo, who paid 23,000 francs for it in 1889.