Jan Jacobszoon Hinlopen (10 May 1626 – 4 September 1666) was a rich Dutch cloth merchant, an officer in the civic guard, a real estate developer in the Jordaan, alderman in the city council and a keen art collector. He would have been elected as a burgomaster, if he had not died at the age of forty, an age considered acceptable to be eligible. He was a prominent patron of the arts in his time, and there is some speculation on being an influential protector of Rembrandt and it is likely that he had good connections with Gabriel Metsu. Hinlopen, like his father-in-law, Joan Huydecoper I, is known in art history because of the poems by Jan Vos reciting the paintings in his house and members of the family. These paintings are spread all over the world, the poems nearly forgotten. Life Jan J. Hinlopen was born as the son of the merchant Jacob J. Hinlopen (1582–1629), who traded spices and ship chandlery. The family origins were in Brabant, then the Southern Netherlands. After Antwerp had been occupied by the Spanish, Protestants, who did not want to convert to Catholicism, were ordered to sell their homes and immoveable possessions and depart. Within four years many Flemish cities lost half of their population emigrating to the north. It is possible the family moved in an earlier stage to the North and in 1572 escaped from Naarden, where all the inhabitants were killed in a massacre. Anyhow, the new immigrants lived in a house on the Nieuwendijk, named "Hinlopen" and very close to the harbour. The name of house has to do with Hindelopen, the small town in the North, producing many skippers and sailors. After coming of age, Jan J. Hinlopen lived with his brother Jacob J. Hinlopen on the Leliegracht at the corner of the Keizersgracht, not far from their parents, who moved to Herengracht. The brothers made money from a cloth business in Warmoesstraat and through building cheap housing in the Jordaan. When their mother died in 1652, the daughter of a Haarlem brewer and burgomaster and herself the owner of a brewery, the Hinlopen brothers inherited a mansion designed by Philips Vingboons, nicely situated in the woods between Baarn, Soest and Hilversum. Career Wishing to make a career in city politics, Jan enrolled in the civic guard as an ensign in 1651-1653 and in 1655. He served under