The Holy Family with a Curtain

Rembrandt made this small panel in 1646, and he played a trick with it that he rarely tried. Around the quiet domestic scene of Mary, the child and Joseph by the fire, he painted a wooden frame. Then across it he painted a red curtain, gathered on rings and pulled halfway, as if someone had just drawn it back to let you look in. In Dutch homes precious pictures really were protected behind little curtains, so the illusion would have been immediate to anyone at the time. It turns the whole thing into a kind of miniature stage you have been invited to uncover. Rembrandt hardly ever bothered with this sort of painted-frame game, common as it was among his Dutch contemporaries.