This portrait, dating from the last decade of Rembrandt's life, depicts Margaretha de Geer, the wife of the extremely wealthy Dordrecht merchant, Jacob Trip.
Jacob Trip (1575 - 1661) made his vast fortune from mining, manufacturing iron and from trading with armaments. The Trips married in 1603. They sat for these portraits when they were both in their eighties, just before Jacob's death in 1661. The 'Portrait of Jacob Trip' has less vitality than that of his wife. It is conceivable that it was finished posthumously.
Margaretha de Geer is depicted with great honesty. She confronts the viewer directly and her age clearly shows in her hands and face. Not untypical for a woman of her generation and age she wears old-fashioned clothes; the large ruff and gown had been fashionable forty years earlier, in the 1620s.
Between 1660-2 the couple's sons, Louis and Hendrick, built the 'Trippenhuis', a grand classicising mansion on one of Amsterdam's canals. It is possible that these portraits were meant to hang there.
