In this remarkable portrait, Rembrandt combined a very bold composition with an astonishingly subtle depiction of the sitter's face and his wry expression, which gets lost in later impressions but is very lively and moving in the present, brilliant impression of the rare first state.
By the 1650's Rembrandt had abandoned the elaborate technical devices of his earlier portraits in favour of a simpler, more monumental style. Unusually, the subject is presented frontally, rather than the favoured three-quarters view, enveloped in a cloak defined in a few broad, heavy folds. The pose is informal, giving the impression that the sitter has just dropped by the studio momentarily. A high-backed chair lends stability and balance to the composition, but Rembrandt ensures that the overall effect is relaxed by having the sitter lean to the left, rather then depicting him dead-centre.
A prominent Amsterdam print dealer with a shop on the Kalverstraat, Clement de Jonghe (1624/5-1677) does not appear to have had extensive business relations with Rembrandt until, presumably during Rembrandt's lifetime, he acquired a large of number of his copperplates and continued to print them. It is possible that the two men struck a deal during the artist's bankruptcy period, to avoid the plates being sold publicly and thereby dispersed. The inventory of de Jonghe's possessions, written by his son Jacobus, lists 74 etched plates by Rembrandt and constitutes the first list of a significant part of Rembrandt's graphic oeuvre. Many of the customary titles of his prints were first recorded in this document. Curiously, it did not include the present plate. Partly for this reason, partly because the man depicted may look a bit older than the 26 or 27 years of age that Clement de Jonghe would have had at the time, some scholars have expressed doubts that he is in fact the sitter (see: White, 1999, p. 153). However, a third-state impression at the Morgan Library, New York, is inscribed by the Paris print dealer Pierre Mariette 'Clement de Jonhge [sic] marchand de tailles douces a Amsterdam 1668'. As Nick Stogdon pointed out, Mariette did not usually annotate his prints with their provenance, only with the date of acquisition, in this case 1670. Rather than stating where or from whom he bought the print, Mariette seems to identify the sitter - and well within de Jonghe's lifetime. Stogdon further speculated that Jacobus de Jonghe may have deliberately left this plate off the inventory, as he considered the copperplate of his father's portrait a personal inheritance rather than just another item amongst other commercial effects (see: Stogdon, 2011, no. 113, p. 196-197).