For Jacob Cats’s biography see the entry on Van Mierevelt’s 1634 Portrait of Jacob Cats (SK-A-258). The only substantial difference between the present portrait and that one, which also shows him bust-length and in lost profile against a dark background, is his clothing. The round collar and tabbaard worn by Cats in the 1634 portrait are visible in the present painting as a pentimento. It seems, then, that Van Mierevelt updated a replica of Cats’s portrait that he had in stock. It was probably around 1652, when Cats furnished his country estate of Sorghvliet, that the painting was mounted in the wonderful carved gilt frame that surrounds it to this day.7 Jonathan Bikker, 2007 See Bibliography and Rijksmuseum painting catalogues See Key to abbreviations and Acknowledgements This entry was published in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, I: Artists Born between 1570 and 1600, coll. cat. Amsterdam 2007, no. 187.