Retrato de una mujer con una cadena de oro

In 1634 Rembrandt was 28, newly settled in Amsterdam and suddenly the portraitist the city's merchant families wanted. This canvas is one half of a pair. Its companion shows a man in a black hat, and the two would have hung side by side as a married couple, the usual way a well-off Dutch household recorded a marriage. What still startles is how little the young painter played it safe. In the woman's tight curls he scratched the highlights straight into the wet paint with the wooden end of his brush, and he let her mouth curl into the beginnings of a smile, unusual in a formal likeness meant to project respectability. The triple layer of lace at her collar is set down with the same quick confidence, thread over thread over dark cloth.