Self portrait with black baret and golden chain

By 1654, the year of this self-portrait with black beret and golden chain, Rembrandt had declared insolvency and was living through the slow humiliation of creditors' claims on his art collection and house. The beret and chain assert a persona directly contradicted by his financial circumstances: both are emblems of artistic nobility derived from the Renaissance tradition of the artist-gentleman, and Rembrandt wore similar accessories in self-portraits from his most successful Amsterdam years. The persistence of this self-presentation in reduced circumstances reads either as ironic defiance or as a genuine assertion that his identity as an artist remained independent of his worldly fortunes. His closest contemporary in this kind of introspective self-examination was Jan Lievens, his Leiden collaborator of the 1620s, but Lievens's self-portraits never achieved the psychological complexity of Rembrandt's late series. The painting passed through the Sedelmeyer collection in Paris — one of the nineteenth century's most important art dealerships — before entering its current private holding, which remains inaccessible for regular public viewing.

Rembrandt's late technique is evident in the thick impasto of the golden chain contrasting with the more thinly painted face. The warm, restricted palette and dramatic chiaroscuro create an atmosphere of introspective gravity characteristic of his mature portraits.