Portrait of Jan Rijcksen and his Wife Griet Jans

Rembrandt painted this double portrait in 1633, soon after moving to Amsterdam as an ambitious young painter in a city getting rich on overseas trade. The seated man is Jan Rijcksen, master shipbuilder for the Dutch East India Company, whose vessels carried that trade around the world. He has been bent over his drawings, a pair of compasses in his hand, when the door opens behind him. His wife, Griet Jans, has just stepped in to pass him a note, and he half-turns, caught mid-thought. Most married couples of that time were painted in separate, stiff, matching portraits. Rembrandt folded the two of them into a single unguarded moment instead.