Portrait of Baertje Martens

Herman Doomer and his wife Baertje Martens occupy an unusual position among Rembrandt's sitters: they were artisans rather than merchants or professionals, and their place in his portrait series reflects the close working relationships he cultivated with Amsterdam's skilled craftsmen. Doomer made ebony-wood frames, including frames for Rembrandt's own paintings, and the two men were evidently on terms of personal warmth. The pendant portraits of husband and wife, both dated 1640, are among the most psychologically intimate Rembrandt produced in this format — the warmth of individual attention he brought to these middle-class craftspeople equals anything he lavished on wealthy commissioning families. The portrait of Baertje in the Hermitage shows an elderly woman in plain but respectable dress whose face Rembrandt renders without flattery and without condescension. Dutch Golden Age portraiture was theoretically democratic in its embrace of all prosperous citizens, but in practice painters often treated artisan and merchant clients differently. These two paintings suggest Rembrandt did not. The Hermitage acquired both works as part of the Russian imperial collection's systematic acquisition of Northern European art.

The warm, sympathetic treatment of the sitter's face and the meticulous rendering of the white collar against the black costume demonstrate Rembrandt's ability to combine formal elegance with genuine human warmth.