Rembrandt created his distinctive portraits with a small palette of colors dominated by dark earth tones and golden highlights. He was a master of chiaroscuro, an Italian term for a style using strong lights and heavy shadows to create depth in a painting and a center of interest.

Portraits by Rembrandt have a special quality- the brilliant use of light to illumine faces, jewels and rich fabrics; the effective use of a limited palette, and the rich, dark, transparent backgrounds all set off the subjects of his portraiture in a way never seen before and often imitated afterwards.

Some of his paintings are on wood, executed in what appears to be essentially the Flemish Technique; some small studies on wood panels were done in a variation of the Direct Painting Technique, and some on canvas in both the Venetian and Direct techniques.

Rembrandt’s contemporary, Gerard de Lairesse, (Rembrandt’s portrait of Gerard de Lairesse at age 25) listed the following main stages of the painting process in his book on painting: 1 stage – “inventing” – the underdrawing on the support 2 stage – “dead-coloring” 3 stage – “working-up” 4 stage – “retouching” or “finishing”