Rembrandt van Rijn and Dutch Golden Age paintings

I was reading an article at The History Blog about a Rembrandt painting and happened to notice the date of the painting, c. 1630-31.

Lately I've been reading histories of the early colonial period of what became the United States, mostly because of my family links to the early years of New Amsterdam. My family, as I have noted before in this blog, was definitely here by 1638. And so it dawned on me that my family members might have dressed and worn facial hair in the styles to be found in Dutch Golden Age paintings.

And so that's what I'm doing this afternoon, while the laundry washes and dries: looking at Rembrandt paintings. Not my usual thing, art.