Moça à janela

Rembrandt painted this in Amsterdam in 1645, a few years after the death of his wife Saskia and as his finances were starting the slide toward the bankruptcy that came in the 1650s. The girl leaning on the sill is probably a servant. Her sunburnt arms and ruddy face suggest outdoor work rather than a lady of leisure. A story clings to the picture. A later French owner wrote that Rembrandt had set it in an actual window of his house, and that passers-by stopped, fooled into thinking a real girl stood there. The tale is almost certainly embroidered. Still, the paint on her cheeks is laid on thick, in raised daubs of rosy pink, so the surface itself catches the light as you move past it.