In this gentle, quiet drawing, Rembrandt observes his wife, Saskia van Uylenburgh, asleep. Working relatively quickly in pen and brown ink, he first sketched the upper image. A tangle of twisty lines of varying thickness and intensity coalesce into a description of a weary female body sunken into a bed. The study below captures a slight, barely perceptible change in Saskia’s pose: her right arm has moved closer to her body, and the positions of her hand and fingers have changed.
Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn (1606–1669), Two Studies of Saskia Asleep, ca. 1635–1637. Pen and brown ink and wash, on laid paper; traces of framing line. Purchased by Pierpont Morgan in 1909, I, 180.