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Woman with a Pink, 1665–69, Rembrandt van Rijn
The capacity for silence – a deep, creative awareness of one’s inner truth – is what distinguishes us as human. All of us, however ordinary or flawed, have at heart a seemingly boundless longing for fulfilment, and it is their consciousness of this that makes Rembrandt’s portraits so beautiful. The Woman with a Pink is lost in the depths of her private reflections. Her dark background is symbolically unimportant, lending greater expression to the soft brightness that plays upon her face. Visibly silent, she is explicitly encountering the mystery of being human. She does not contemplate the carnation (the ‘pink’), usually an emblem of love, but looks within, in silence, quiet and engrossed.
