Man with a Magnifying Glass

With its companion portrait, "Woman with a Pink" (New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, 14.40.622), this unsigned canvas has been universally regarded by scholars as a late work by Rembrandt, probably dating from the early 1660s. Rembrandt presents the sitters in imaginary attire that broadly recalls costumes painted by Titian. The object held by the man appears to be a "thread-counter," which was a lens used to examine the weave and quality of cloth. Such an attribute would identify the man's profession, which he evidently shared with the five main figures in Rembrandt's Syndics of the Amster... Mehr ...