Alte Frau beim Lesen, vermutlich die Prophetin Hanna

Rembrandt signed and dated this in 1631, when he was about 25 and still living in Leiden, the town where he was born, just before he moved to Amsterdam to make his name. The model was almost certainly his own mother, Neeltgen, who sat for him more than once in these early years. He casts her as Hannah, the elderly prophetess from the Gospel of Luke who spent her days in the temple. The light does something unusual. It skips past her face, which he leaves in shadow, and settles on the big illuminated page and the wrinkled hand resting on it, both built up in paint thick enough to catch the eye. Within the year he had left Leiden for Amsterdam.