The Girl in a Picture Frame (The Jewish Bride).

The sitter is framed by a feigned picture frame of which only the bottom and right side are visible. She wears a dark red, velvet dress, a black hat and pear-shaped pearl earrings. This type of costume is not associated with the fashion of the time. When it appeared in portraits, it was treated as ancient attire that suited well the mythical, historical, oriental or biblical subjects. Rembrandt often portrayed figures dressed in this manner both in his oil paintings and etchings. It is not a portrait, but a tronie, or a study of a head or half-figure without any significant attributes or action. Rembrandt originally began to paint a different picture — of a woman seated, turned slightly to the left, wearing a dress corresponding to the fashion of the time, with a millstone ruff, and wearing a small bonnet. The figure was further to the right than the girl in the final version. The portrait of the woman in a bonnet was never completed and the panel was reused.