According to the inscription, this portrait of the general and statesman Jacob De la Gardie was painted in 1606, when he was 23 years old. At that point, he had started to study military strategy in the Netherlands, having been a Polish prisoner of war for five years. A few years later, De la Gardie led the successful campaign in Russia that consolidated Swedish ascendancy in the Baltic lands. The painting is presumably the work of a Dutch artist.