Head of an Aged Woman

Rembrandt van Rijn, 1655/1660

Shown from the chest up, a pale-skinned older woman looks down and to our right in front of a shadowy background in this vertical painting. Brushstrokes are visible throughout, especially in the woman’s face and clothing. Her shoulders square toward us but she looks down and to the side with heavy-lidded, sunken eyes. Her face is deeply lined between her eyebrows, down the sides of her nose, and at the corners of her mouth. Her cheeks sag in jowls on either side of a fleshy chin, and her thin lips are set in a line. A cream-white cloth wraps across her forehead and covers her head. An earth-brown, voluminous hood rests across the crown of her head and droops to her shoulders, where it meets the cloak fastened at her throat over a steel-gray garment. The background is also dark brown and signed to our left near the woman’s shoulder, “Rembrandt 1957.”
Artist
Rembrandt van Rijn
Date
1655/1660
Type
Painting
Medium
oil on panel
Dimensions
21.1 × 17.5 cm
Collection
National Gallery of Art, Washington
Licence
Public domain, CC0

Image description

Shown from the chest up, a pale-skinned older woman looks down and to our right in front of a shadowy background in this vertical painting. Brushstrokes are visible throughout, especially in the woman’s face and clothing. Her shoulders square toward us but she looks down and to the side with heavy-lidded, sunken eyes. Her face is deeply lined between her eyebrows, down the sides of her nose, and at the corners of her mouth. Her cheeks sag in jowls on either side of a fleshy chin, and her thin lips are set in a line. A cream-white cloth wraps across her forehead and covers her head. An earth-brown, voluminous hood rests across the crown of her head and droops to her shoulders, where it meets the cloak fastened at her throat over a steel-gray garment. The background is also dark brown and signed to our left near the woman’s shoulder, “Rembrandt 1957.”

Rembrandt van Rijn