Saskia face swap

Where this one comes from

Rembrandt married Saskia van Uylenburgh in 1634 and began this portrait almost immediately, reworking it over the following years. She came from a well-connected family in Friesland and brought money into a marriage that spent it. Three of their four children died in infancy; the fourth, Titus, was born in 1641, and Saskia died the year after, at twenty-nine. It hangs in Washington, at the National Gallery of Art.

What is in the picture

She is dressed up rather than dressed: a veil worked with gold, pearls at the ear and throat, a red so deep it reads as brown until the light finds it. Rembrandt painted her constantly — as a goddess, as a shepherdess, in etchings done in ten minutes while she sat in bed — and the habit of looking at one face for eight years shows here. The modelling is warm and unhurried and nothing about it is trying to impress a client, because there was no client.

When people use it

For soft light and good news. It is one of the few pictures on this site with no edge to it at all, which makes it the one to reach for when the caption is simply affectionate.

How your face lands in it

A calm front-facing head under a veil, lit gently from the left with no hard shadow: technically one of the gentler swaps here, and the result tends to look kind, because the whole picture is lit to be kind. The veil and the jewels frame the face closely and none of it moves. A relaxed photograph with a soft expression lands best.

Saskia van Uylenburgh, the Wife of the Artist — Rembrandt van Rijn, c. 1635. Rembrandt van Rijn died in 1669, placing the painting in the public domain centuries ago; the Google Art Project photograph of it is published as public domain. Source

Also in: Paintings · Baroque · Dutch Golden Age