Portrait of an Old Woman in a Fur Robe

The 1653 Portrait of an Old Woman in a Fur Robe in the Pushkin Museum is among the Hermitage's companion Rembrandts: elderly women in fine clothing who are treated with a dignity and psychological depth equal to anything he brought to his wealthy merchant sitters. The fur robe suggests material comfort if not great wealth, and Rembrandt's rendering of it — thick, warm, the surface texture differentiated from the skin above through subtle paint handling — demonstrates the technical control of his mature period. Old women as portrait subjects were largely invisible in the mainstream of Dutch Golden Age portraiture, which focused on the faces of men of affairs and the fashionable appearance of their wives at the height of their social careers. Rembrandt's repeated engagement with elderly women, from his early studies of his mother to late anonymous subjects, represents a democratic humanist vision that valued the contemplative and the aged alongside the vigorous and the commercially successful.

Rembrandt contrasts the soft, warm texture of the fur robe with the delicate rendering of the aged face, using his characteristic golden light to unify the composition with warmth and dignity.