Die Jüdische Braut

Rembrandt made this in the last years of his life, around 1665, when he was old, out of fashion, and had buried most of the people closest to him. It shows a man and a woman standing close, his hand laid gently on her breast, hers resting on his. The tender name it carries, the Jewish bride, came much later from a collector's guess and probably isn't right. The couple are more likely a pair from the Bible, Isaac and Rebecca. What stops people in front of it is the paint itself. Look at the gold sleeve of his coat, where Rembrandt seems to have dragged the pigment with a knife and even his fingers, building the cloth up in thick ridges you can read from across the room. Van Gogh once said he'd give ten years of his life just to sit before this picture with a crust of bread.