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Karin,
The airy composition in the original definitely gives a great feeling of space!
I should have mentioned that The Met imposes a size restriction on canvases, so that was one part of the cropping issue. When I started doing copies at the Met, my instructor stressed maintaining the head size because his emphasis within the time constraints was on learning to paint a head in the manner of the old masters. Initially, he intended the experience to be a learning process and a study only. He also spoke about keeping to scale to help prevent losing the drawing. I have found that scaling down the painting can play a trick on the eye in an odd way, drawing-wise. Since then I've departed from that idea, doing copies of details from larger paintings and recently scaling down one composition that exceeded the museum size limit. (We can't go larger than 30" x 30".)
While I wanted to shoot for more finished pieces compositionally around the time I copied that Rembrandt, I was encouraged to let go of my ego and concentrate on the technical lessons at that stage.
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