Portrait of Maerten Soolmans

Rembrandt was 28 in 1634 when a rich young Amsterdam couple hired him to mark their marriage with a pair of full-length portraits, an ambitious and expensive format he almost never used. This is the groom, Maerten Soolmans, heir to a sugar-refining fortune, shown life-size in black silk trimmed with rosettes and an extravagance of lace, one hand extended as if greeting a guest. His bride, Oopjen Coppit, stands in the matching canvas. The two hung together for centuries in private hands, and in 2016 France and the Netherlands bought them jointly for about 160 million euros — agreeing to share them, so the pair now moves between the Louvre and the Rijksmuseum rather than being split apart.