Study of an old woman (Rembrandt's mother)

This Study of an Old Woman traditionally identified as Rembrandt's Mother from 1631, in the Mauritshuis, is one of the most intimate works in his early Leiden production — a small panel (18.4 × 14 cm) that may be the most private of all his close-up elderly head studies. Whether the identification is accurate — Rembrandt's mother Neeltje Willemsdr van Zuytbroeck died in 1640 and was presumably available as a model throughout his Leiden years — is impossible to verify, but the tenderness of the observation and the intimacy of the scale suggest a subject known well and regarded with affection rather than approached as an anonymous model. The Mauritshuis holds the panel in its permanent collection alongside major works from the Dutch Golden Age, where its small size and personal quality distinguish it from the ambitious large-scale works that typically anchor survey exhibitions of Rembrandt's career.

Rembrandt renders the elderly woman's face with tender attention to the effects of age, using soft, focused light to model the weathered features with both truthfulness and compassion.