The painting was acquired by Adriaan van der Hoop between 1822 and 1828 as a portrait of Hugo de Groot, an incorrect identification that was maintained until the 1903 Rijksmuseum collection catalogue.6 The attribution to Abraham van den Tempel that this bustlength portrait carried when it was in the Van der Hoop collection was correctly changed to Van Ravesteyn early on.7 The anonymous sitter’s ruff was in fashion between about 1625 and 1635. The painting should be dated to the beginning of the 1630s, as it was in this period that Van Ravesteyn’s modelling was at its softest. The fluffy treatment of the sitter’s hair also fits with this dating. 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. 256.