Self portrait

This self-portrait from 1660, previously in the Sedelmeyer collection before dispersal to private hands, belongs to the extraordinary sequence of late self-portraits that Rembrandt produced in conditions of radical personal and financial difficulty. By 1660 he had moved with Hendrickje Stoffels and Titus to a modest house on the Rozengracht, far from the grand Jodenbreestraat address that had symbolized his earlier success. The formal structure of these late self-portraits — a direct gaze, hands that may hold palette and brushes, simplified dress — strips away the theatrical costumes and social pretensions of his earlier self-presentation to arrive at something closer to pure self-examination. Beethoven's late string quartets have been invoked as the closest parallel in another art form: works that achieve their profundity through extreme formal economy and uncompromising honesty about the human condition. Rembrandt painted perhaps ten to fifteen self-portraits in the 1660s alone, collectively constituting a visual autobiography without precedent in European art.

Rembrandt's late self-portrait technique builds the face through accumulated layers of warm and cool tones, creating an effect of living, breathing presence. The broadly handled costume and background concentrate all visual attention on the powerfully modeled features.