Old Woman Cutting Her Nails
by Mary Elizabeth Podles
Long attributed to Rembrandt, this painting represents an old woman cutting her nails in a darkened room. A dramatic fall of light veils her eyes but casts light on her hands engaged in a seemingly humdrum activity. A sewing box and cloth on the table behind her suggest that this is a scene from ordinary life. However, she is dressed in a fur-trimmed robe in rich browns and with a veil of a muted gold color, which hint at something perhaps rather out of the ordinary. A brief look at Rembrandt’s career might shed more light on our picture and its possible meaning.
Both Rembrandt’s style and subject matter evolved considerably over the course of his lifetime. Most artists of seventeenth-century Holland were specialists, often choosing the subject category practiced by their apprentice masters and painting only, say, still lifes for the length of their careers: one artist, for example, spent his whole life painting pictures of asparagus. Not so Rembrandt. Originally he apprenticed to Pieter Lastman, a history painter. Histories, in the seventeenth-century hierarchy, were the most exalted of subjects, including not just history, but also literature, mythology, and the Bible. Landscape, portrait, and still life were considered less serious, and history painters targeted connoisseurs with literary and artistic tastes. Even if the subject were a religious one, history paintings seemed to be aesthetic, not devotional, in nature.
THIS ARTICLE ONLY AVAILABLE TO SUBSCRIBERS.
FOR QUICK ACCESS:
Mary Elizabeth Podles is the retired curator of Renaissance and Baroque art at the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, Maryland. She and her husband Leon, a Touchstone senior editor, have six children and live in Baltimore, Maryland.
• Not a subscriber or wish to renew your subscription? Subscribe to Touchstone today for full online access. Over 30 years of publishing!
personal subscriptions
Purchase Print &
Online Subscription
Get six issues (one year) of Touchstone PLUS full online access including pdf downloads for only $39.95. That's only $3.34 per month!
Get a one-year full-access subscription to the Touchstone online archives including pdf downloads for only $19.95. That's only $1.66 per month!
gift subscriptions
GIVE Print &
Online Subscription
Give six issues (one year) of Touchstone PLUS full online access including pdf downloads for the reduced rate of $29.95. That's only $2.50 per month!
Transactions will be processed on a secure server.
bulk subscriptions
Order Touchstone subscriptions in bulk and save $10 per sub! Each subscription includes 6 issues of Touchstone plus full online access to touchstonemag.com—including archives, videos, and pdf downloads of recent issues for only $29.95 each! Great for churches or study groups.
kindle subscription
OR get a subscription to Touchstone to read on your Kindle for only $1.99 per month! (This option is KINDLE ONLY and does not include either print or online.)
Your subscription goes a long way to ensure that Touchstone is able to continue its mission of publishing quality Christian articles and commentary.
more on Art from the online archives
33.2—March/April 2020
An Architectural Sign of Mere Christianity by Michael Ward
32.4—July/August 2019
on Single-Mindedness in Durer's Ritter, Tod, und Teufel by Anthony Costello
more from the online archives
20.8—October 2007
The Deep & Abiding Biblical Roots of Western Liberal Education by David Lyle Jeffrey
21.1—January/February 2008
John Chrysostom’s Discovery of the Blessings & Mysteries of Marriage by Mike Aquilina
calling all readers
Please Donate
"There are magazines worth reading but few worth saving . . . Touchstone is just such a magazine."
—Alice von Hildebrand
"Here we do not concede one square millimeter of territory to falsehood, folly, contemporary sentimentality, or fashion. We speak the truth, and let God be our judge. . . . Touchstone is the one committedly Christian conservative journal."
—Anthony Esolen, Touchstone senior editor
