A Young Man Holding a Staff

Pieter Claesz Soutman

National Gallery of Art

Shown from the chest up, a light-skinned, cleanshaven man looks down and to our left in this vertical portrait painting. His shoulders angle slightly to the right, but he turns to look in the other direction with dark eyes under gathered brows. He has a prominent nose, a pointed chin, and his full lips are parted. His dark blond hair is parted down the middle and falls to both shoulders. His right arm, to our left, crosses his chest, and he holds a staff with that hand along the right side of the painting. He wears a tawny-brown coat with buttons down the front over a high white collar. The background is painted with shades of fawn and peanut brown. The artist signed and dated the painting along the center of the left edge in faint brown paint: “P. Soutman F.A. 1640.”