Michael M. Zachary

British, died 1837

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Shown from the thighs up, a pale-skinned woman looks down and off to our left as she holds the pointed end of a dagger toward her chest in this vertical painting. Her lips are slightly parted, and her arms are spread wide as holds the hilt of the dagger in her right hand, to our left. Her hooded, dark brown eyes are rimmed with red. Her head tilts to our left, her pale lips parted. There are gray shadows at the corners of her mouth and along her jawline. Her brown hair is pulled back under a cloth covering painted with white flecks to suggest shiny thread or possibly jewels. She wears a long, tawny-brown gown with diaphanous sleeves. The bodice is laced up over a cream-white undergarment with a deep V neck and voluminous sleeves with unfastened cuffs near her wrists. She wears a large, teardrop-shaped pearl in the ear we can see and two necklaces. One necklace is a strand of pearls, and the other is a gold and possibly jeweled pendant with another teardrop pearl hanging from a cord. A gold belt drapes around her hips over a narrow waist. She is warmly lit from the upper left and set against an earth-brown background. The artist signed and dated the center left, “Rembrandt 1664.”
Rembrandt van Rijn, Lucretia, 1664, oil on canvas, Andrew W. Mellon Collection, 1937.1.76

Lucretia

Rembrandt van Rijn · 1664 · oil on canvas ·  Accession ID  1937.1.76