This painting is a pendant (companion piece) to Rembrandt's Portrait of a Man. Though the subjects' identities are uncertain, it is suspected that the "Man" was Cornelis van Beresteyn and this woman was his second wife, Corvina van Hofdyck. Interestingly, "her pose, including the precise positions of the hands (one holding an ostrich fan), repeats that of her mother-in-law as depicted by Jacob Willemsz. Delff in 1592." - Metropolitan Museum of Art. This suggests that Rembrandt may have painted the Beresteyn portraits to "match" the style of the ensemble of family portraits already hanging at the Beresteyn family home in Delft.
