Self-Portrait

Rembrandt was a dedicated self-portraitist all his life, and roughly forty self-portraits by him survive today. In this example, painted when Rembrandt was fifty-four, the artist was unsparing in depicting the signs of aging in his own face, building up the paint in high relief to convey his furrowed brow, the heavy pouches beneath his eyes, and his double chin. The recent removal of a synthetic varnish has revealed more of Rembrandt’s working method, showing, for example, how he flipped the brush to incise with its butt end the rough curls spilling out of his cap.