Self Portrait with Two Circles

Self-Portrait with Two Circles from around 1665-69 in the Kenwood House collection is considered by many scholars the greatest of Rembrandt's approximately eighty self-portraits and one of the most profound paintings in Western art. The identity of the two large circles in the background — among the most discussed formal elements in any painting of this period — remains unresolved: proposals include a map of the world, a demonstration of freehand circle drawing (as Giotto reportedly demonstrated to the Pope), a symbol of artistic perfection derived from the perfect circle of classical aesthetics, and a purely formal compositional element. Rembrandt presents himself here holding the tools of his trade — brush, palette, maulstick — asserting his identity as a working craftsman-artist rather than a wealthy gentleman-painter, in a work of such monumental scale and psychological completeness that the absence of any documentary context (no commission, no recorded purpose, no known destination) only deepens its force. Kenwood House, the neoclassical villa on Hampstead Heath bequeathed to the public with its collection by the 1st Earl of Iveagh in 1927, provides this work with one of the most appropriate settings of any painting in a public collection.

The technique demonstrates Rembrandt's full late mastery: the face is built up in layers of thick impasto that create an almost three-dimensional effect, while the palette and hands are rendered with extraordinary freedom. The mysterious circles on the wall are painted with broad, sweeping strokes.