KEYSER, THOMAS DE

born c. 1596, , Amsterdam, Neth. died June 7, 1667 Dutch Baroque painter and architect, best known for his portraiture of leading civic figures in Amsterdam. He was the son of the distinguished architect and sculptor Hendrick de Keyser. De Keyser chiefly excelled as a portrait painter, though he also executed historical and mythological pictures, such as the Theseus and Ariadne in the Amsterdam Town Hall. His portraiture is lively and expressive and is often distinguished by elegant composition and a rich chiaroscuro. Some of his portraits are life-size, but the artist generally preferred to keep them on a considerably smaller scale, even when full-length, as in Constantin Huygens and His Secretary (1627). He painted few pictures during the last 27 years of his life. De Keyser's major architectural work is the tower of the Amsterdam Town Hall.