Man in Oriental Dress

By 1633 Rembrandt was in his late 20s and had just moved to Amsterdam, a port swollen with money and cargo. Ships of the Dutch East India Company were unloading silk, spices and pearls, and with them came a taste for the exotic that a young painter could sell. This head is not a portrait of anyone. It is a tronie, a study of a character in costume, an anonymous model dressed up in a turban and a fur-trimmed robe that Rembrandt kept in his studio. Painted on a single oak panel, it let him show off what buyers wanted from him, the play of light on gold thread and fur, the weight of fabric, a face caught half in shadow. He turned out several of these turbaned heads in the early 1630s, and collectors bought them as readily as they bought real portraits.