_Ferdinand Bol_ (Dutch: 1616-1680).
Bol was the most distinguished of Rembrandt's pupils in
portraiture. He was born at Dordrecht, and settled at
Amsterdam, where he acquired burgess rights in 1652. One of
Bol's portraits in the Louvre has attained the honour of being
hung in the Salon Carré. His "Four Regents of the Leprosy
Hospital" at Amsterdam is the painter's masterpiece, and one
of the finest works of the Dutch School. Bol's pictures are
remarkable for a prevailing yellow tone. Up to about the
year 1660 he seems to have remained the pupil of Rembrandt.
"Unfortunately he did not remain faithful to his early
teaching. He made sacrifices to the taste of his time, and
abandoned the sober and grave figures, the severe and sustained
method of painting, the powerful light and shade of his school,
to seek a fresh source of success in overwhelming allegory and
in the imitation of Rubens. This was his ruin. His later works,
painted in full light, are very inferior to those of an earlier
date; their colouring is hard, glaring, and discordant, and
in composition they are frequently bombastic and pretentious"
(Havard: _The Dutch School of Painting_, p. 93).
The sitter is conjectured to be an astronomer, from the globes on the
table before him and from the look on his face as of a man dwelling
among the clouds. The picture is signed, and dated 1652.