Rembrandt, Portrait of Maria Trip (detail), 1639.

This beautifully dressed young woman is Maria Trip, the daughter of a rich Amsterdam merchant. Rembrandt - who was at this time one of the most important portrait painters in Amsterdam - painted her in 1639. Maria was twenty years old and still unmarried. Two years later she married Balthasar Coymans who had gathered a fortune in business. He was thirty years older than Maria.

Rembrandt has made the most of Maria’s rich clothes and jewellery by playing with the light and shade. A small light dances in each pearl. Even the thick folds of her black clothes shine with the light. The gossamer-fine linen is brilliantly depicted: the black fabric of the dress on her shoulders and the skin tones of her chest, glimmer through the white. She is holding a folded fan with a ribbon of gold lace that falls across her hand. Throughout the painting, Rembrandt has added subtle edges of shadow: in the sleeves, along the collar and on her hand.

(Source: Flickr / gandalfsgallery, via enchantingnagchampa)