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拍品专文
Although much is known and agreed upon in the field of Rembrandt scholarship, there are still areas where debate is possible, and conclusions are liable to challenge. Whilst the identity of sitters is unsurprisingly open to conjecture, in this case even the very gender of the subject is uncertain. For the first 150 years of its existence this print was described by successive academics as a portrait of an old man. It was only in 1797 that the great cataloguer of old master prints, Adam Bartsch, listed it as Vieille qui dort (Old Woman sleeping), and so it has remained to this day. Nicholas Stogdon notes that the sitter bears a strong resemblance with Rembrandt's Pancake Woman (NH 144).
Identifying the subject as such places this print firmly in the tradition of works illustrating the vices of laziness or idleness, by showing an old woman who has fallen asleep whilst reading the Bible. However, Rembrandt was not a moralising artist, and may simply have been intrigued by the challenge of representing a care-worn face in repose. The fact that she was reading a book gives, from a contemporary perspective, an interesting insight into the degree of literacy, even amongst the older and poorer citizens of Amsterdam at the time.
Identifying the subject as such places this print firmly in the tradition of works illustrating the vices of laziness or idleness, by showing an old woman who has fallen asleep whilst reading the Bible. However, Rembrandt was not a moralising artist, and may simply have been intrigued by the challenge of representing a care-worn face in repose. The fact that she was reading a book gives, from a contemporary perspective, an interesting insight into the degree of literacy, even amongst the older and poorer citizens of Amsterdam at the time.