Young woman with earrings

1654 was not a kind year for Rembrandt. That summer his companion Hendrickje Stoffels was summoned before the Amsterdam church council and shamed for living with him unmarried, and the debts that would soon cost him his house were already gathering. None of that shows here. A young woman, caught in a small private moment, lifts a hand to try on an earring, her skin warm in the low light. This is not a commissioned portrait but a tronie, a study of a face and a mood rather than a named sitter. Rembrandt painted many such heads across his life, partly as practice, partly to sell. He kept this one small and close, about the size of a real face seen at arm's length.