Portrait of Agatha Bas

Painted in 1641, a year before Rembrandt began the huge militia group now called The Night Watch, this is a quieter kind of experiment. Agatha Bas was 30, the wife of an Amsterdam wool merchant, and her husband's matching portrait now hangs in Brussels. Rembrandt frames her inside a painted ebony border, as if she stands at a window. Then he breaks the illusion: her left hand rests on the fictive frame and the tip of her fan crosses over it, edging out into the viewer's room. Look closely at the hairline, where he scratched fine loose strands into the wet paint with the blunt end of his brush.