A Woman Lying on a Bed 1658

Rembrandt van Rijn created this etching, titled *A Woman Lying on a Bed*, sometime during the Dutch Golden Age. Here, Rembrandt engages with the visual language of his time, but he also subtly subverts it. Unlike many of his contemporaries, he often chose to depict women in their everyday reality, rather than idealizing them. We see a nude woman, but her vulnerability is palpable. Her eyes are closed, and she appears lost in her own world. Meanwhile, another figure looms in the background, the voyeur. We can interpret the male figure in the background as symbolic of the male gaze that defined the era. Rembrandt’s intimate portrayal of the figure offers an alternative narrative which recognizes women as individuals with interior lives and personal experiences. How does this tension between objectification and personal narrative resonate with contemporary discussions about gender, representation, and the gaze?