Painted c. 1667 and one of the most celebrated masterpieces of the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, this endearing work gained its current name in the early nineteenth century, when an Amsterdam art collector identified the subject as that of a Jewish father bestowing a necklace upon his daughter on her wedding day. However, this interpretation is no longer accepted and the identity of the couple remains uncertain. The ambiguity of the image is increased by the lack of a narrative context, leaving only the central universal theme of a couple joined in love, though the type of love remains a mystery. Speculative suggestions as to the couple’s identity have ranged from Rembrandt’s son, Titus, and his bride, or the Amsterdam poet Miguel de Barrios and his wife. Several couples have also been suggested from the Old Testament, including Abraham and Sarah, or Boaz and Ruth. The most popular interpretation of the painting is that of Isaac embracing his wife Rebecca, as they are being spied on by Abimelech, Genesis 26:8, which theory is supported by a drawing made by Rembrandt close to the same time.
According to the Biblical story, Isaac makes a visit to the land of the Philistines and pretends that Rebecca is his sister, as the Philistines had wanted to seduce her and if they had known she was Isaac’s wife, they would have felt obliged to kill him first. One day, the Philistine King, Abimelech, observes the couple from a window making love in secret and surmises the truth of their relationship. He reproves Isaac for the deception, pointing out that any man might have lain with Rebecca in all innocence, not realising she was a married woman, bringing dishonour on himself and his people.
The image presents an intimate relationship between the two subjects, as the man places his hand on the woman’s breast, while she instinctively moves to protect her modesty, in the classic Venus pudica pose, which Rembrandt would have known from engravings of classical statues. The couple display every sign of tenderness towards each other, suggesting this is not a common seduction scene often found in Dutch genre paintings. The image is renowned for the manner in which it depicts the sensitive fusion of spiritual and physical love.