Bildnis einer Frau, vermutlich Mitglied der Familie Van Beresteyn

In 1632 Rembrandt was in his mid-twenties and had just moved from his home town of Leiden to Amsterdam, where he quickly became the portrait painter the merchant class wanted. This is one half of a pair. Her husband hangs beside her in the same museum, the two made to face each other as a married couple would on a wall at home. She wears an enormous starched millstone ruff, the wide flat collar that framed the head like a plate. It was already going out of fashion by 1632, kept up by older, conservative regent families like the Van Beresteyns of Delft. In her hand is a fan of ostrich feathers. Rembrandt copied her stiff pose almost exactly from a portrait of her mother-in-law painted 40 years earlier, so the picture would match the family portraits she was marrying into.