Jan Six

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Jan Six (January 14, 1618 in Amsterdam - May 28, 1700 in Amsterdam) was an important cultural figure in the golden age of the Netherlands. The son of a well-to-do merchant in the textile trade, Six studied liberal arts and law in Leiden in 1634. He became the son-in-law of the mayor of Amsterdam, Nicolaes Tulp in 1655 when he married his daughter Margaretha. Thanks to his father-in-law, he became magistrate of family law and various other appointments on the city council, eventually becoming mayor of Amsterdam himself in 1691 at the ripe age of 73.

Six was good friends with the poet Joost van den Vondel and the painter Rembrandt van Rijn, during the forties. Six remained a devotee of the arts all his life and wrote plays himself, the most famous being Medea, published in 1648 (with an etching by Rembrandt), and Onschult (Innocence) in 1662. In the same year the Dutch translation of Baldassarre Castiglione's Il libro del Cortegiano was devoted to Six. His collection of paintings, drawings, and etchings, known as the Six Collection, enjoyed public notoriety in his lifetime and is still well known today among art scholars.