_Rembrandt_ (Dutch: 1606-1669). _See 45._
An old lady, eighty-three years of age (as the inscription shows). This
splendid portrait is dated 1634, and was made therefore when Rembrandt
was twenty-eight. His mother was from the first a favourite sitter of
his, and hence, perhaps, the affectionate fidelity with which he always
painted the wrinkled faces of old age. In the British Museum there is
an Indian-ink copy of this portrait, from which it appears that the
lady's name was Françoise van Wasserhoven. Rembrandt, says M. Michel,
"is most individual and moving in those portraits of old women, in
which by the accidents of form and feature he so admirably suggests the
moral life."