An astronomer in his study

Images of astronomers proliferated in the third quarter of the seventeenth century, especially among artists of the Delft and Leiden schools. These paintings are visual manifestations of the fruitful scientific research that took place in the Netherlands in the period: Jan Swammerdam and Antonie van Leeuwenhoek devised notable technical improvements to the microscope; Christiaan Huygens discovered the rings of Saturn; and Willem Jansz. and Joan Blaeu published some of the most accurate maps and atlases of their time.

Here, the bespectacled astronomer gazes intently at an astronomical treatise whose pages furl over the window ledge. With his right hand he holds a compass against a celestial globe. His dress marks him as an erudite man of the world – a costly silk housecoat (Japonse rok) imported from Japan and modeled on the kimono. The painting’s format of a single figure set within a window opening was a favored compositional device of Gerrit Dou.

At the time of the painting’s sale in 1998, Fred Meijer proposed an attribution to Dou's follower Jan van Staveren and suggested the entablature dated '1672' may have been added by a pupil following the artist's death at the end of the 1660s.