Half-length portrait of a young man

This 1651 half-length portrait of a young man at the Gemäldegalerie Berlin demonstrates Bol's developing portrait style midway through his independent career. The work combines the Rembrandtesque attention to psychological character that marked his early work with the increasing refinement of surface and lightening of palette that characterized his movement toward a more internationally fashionable portrait style. Berlin's collection, assembled systematically from the seventeenth century onward by Hohenzollern and later state acquisitions, holds major examples of Dutch Golden Age portraiture that document the genre's development from Rembrandt's studio through its dispersal among accomplished students.

The portrait shows Bol in transition between styles, the Rembrandtesque warmth of the modeling beginning to give way to the smoother, more refined surface that would characterize his later portraits.