The face is familiar, as is the penetrating gaze with which the sitter stares directly out at the viewer. No question, it is Rembrandt, late in his life, at a time when he has suffered through the cruel indignities of failure after so many years of success. Indeed, this portrait, painted in 1659, dates to the year after Rembrandt’s possessions and his house on the Sint-Anthonisbreestraat had been auctioned as a result of his insolvency. It may well have been one of the first works he painted in the small house on the Rozengracht, in the painters’ quarter of Amsterdam, where he had moved when his fortunes and his prospects were at low ebb. In the following year Rembrandt set up a business agreement with his son Titus and Hendrickje Stoffels, the artist’s companion in the last decades of his life, that prevented him from being sued by any of his dissatisfied creditors for recovery of debts.
Rightly or wrongly it seems almost impossible to ponder this work without interpreting it in light of what is known about Rembrandt’s life. This inclination is felt in part because of the extensive biographical information that has come down to us, through which we we are able to feel a closer contact with the man and his life than we do with most artists of this period. It also seems possible to interpret Rembrandt’s mood in such paintings because he painted, drew, and etched so many self-portraits that changes in his appearance can be measured and analyzed by comparing one to another. Even more significantly, however, we read these images biographically because Rembrandt forces us to do so. He looks out at us and confronts us directly. His deep-set eyes peer intently. They appear steady, yet heavy and not without sadness. As Hofstede de Groot remarked in reference to this painting when it was shown in the 1898 Rembrandt exhibition in Amsterdam, “It would be difficult to find in any of his paintings a pair of eyes that peer at us more sharply or penetratingly.” Émile Michel, in his review of the exhibition, was even more expressive about the forcefulness of Rembrandt’s gaze through the heavy wrinkles that had come to age his face so prematurely.
While the observations of Hofstede de Groot and Michel seem entirely appropriate to the image, too often this painting has been subjected to overly romantic interpretations, in which authors have tried to read into this somber image Rembrandt’s own reflections upon the profound tragedy of his life. Interpreting paintings on the basis of an artist’s biography is dangerous, particularly with an artist whose life has been romanticized to the extent that Rembrandt’s has been. In this instance the inclination to interpret this image as a tragic one was reinforced by the thick layers of discolored varnish that had given the portrait a heavy, brooding quality. With the removal of the discolored varnish during restoration in 1992, the fallacy of such interpretations became particularly apparent. With the rich range of pinks and other flesh tones on his face once again visible, Rembrandt’s state of mind seems to have improved remarkably. While the thick impastos and bold strokes he used to model his face still create the dynamic vigor of the head, apparent now as well is the economy with which Rembrandt handled his paint: he has allowed a greenish gray ImprimaturaA colored priming layer used to establish the tonality of the painting. layer to read as the shadowed area around the eyes. Finally, the firmness of his touch is accented by the wiry rhythms in his mustache and in the hair protruding from under his beret, which he has delineated by scratching the wet paint with the blunt end of his brush.
An added benefit from the restoration was the removal of OverpaintA layer of paint that covers original paint. that had flattened the appearance of Rembrandt’s torso. With the three-dimensional character of this portion of the painting restored, the head seems far more firmly planted on the body than it had previously. The light that so effectively illuminates the head now also accents Rembrandt’s left shoulder and, to a lesser extent, his broadly executed clasped hands. The X-radiograph [see X-radiographyA photographic or digital image analysis method that visually records an object's ability to absorb or transmit x-rays. The differential absorption pattern is useful for examining an object's internal structure as well as for comparing the variation in pigment types.] of the head, which reveals the vigorous, almost sculptural character of Rembrandt’s handling of paint, also indicates, through the density of the paint in the beret, that Rembrandt initially painted the beret a different color [fig. 1]
[fig. 1] Detail of head, X-radiograph composite, Rembrandt van Rijn, Self-Portrait, 1659, oil on canvas, National Gallery of Art, Washington, Andrew W. Mellon Collection, 1937.1.72. It may well have been white, for the upper ridges of a whitish paint layer can be seen through the overlying black paint.
Although Rembrandt’s pose seems so appropriate to the forcefulness of his gaze, quite surprisingly, it was inspired by Raphanel’s portrait of Balthasar Castiglione [fig. 2]
[fig. 2] Raphael, Balthasar Castiglione, c. 1514–1515, oil on panel, Musée du Louvre, Paris. Photo: © RMN / Art Resource, NY. Photographer: Jean-Gilles Berizzi. The memory of Castiglione’s direct gaze and clasped hands, which Rembrandt first saw when the painting appeared in an auction in Amsterdam on April 19, 1639, must have remained deeply ingrained in his mind for the intervening twenty years. This famous work had made a tremendous impact on Rembrandt, for he even made a rough sketch after it at the sale (Albertina, Vienna). In that same year, 1639, Rembrandt etched a self-portrait that was in part inspired by Raphael’s image and in part by Titian’s portrait, then known as Ariosto, which was in Amsterdam in the Alfonso Lopez Collection (National Gallery, London). In the following year, 1640, Rembrandt painted a self-portrait (National Gallery, London) that reflected in composition and intellectual concept both the Raphael's Balthasar Castiglione and Titian’s Ariosto. In this 1640 Self-Portrait, Rembrandt, dressed in a fanciful historicizing costume, portrayed himself with all of the elegance and dignity of the renowned Renaissance men of letters thought to have been depicted by Raphael (Marchigian, 1483 - 1520) and Titian (Venetian, 1488/1490 - 1576).
In Rembrandt’s 1659 Self-Portrait, all compositional references to Titian’s portrait have disappeared, particularly the stone parapet upon which the artist rests his arm in the 1639 etching and the 1640 painting. Perhaps at this later moment of his life he was drawn to Raphael’s painting because of its self-contained composition, which he must have felt appropriate for expressing the quiet intensity with which he wished to imbue his self-portrait; perhaps he remembered the subdued colors of Castiglione’s costume or the effective way in which Raphael used the beret to frame his head. Clearly Rembrandt has adapted all of these aspects of Raphael’s painting in his self-portrait, while at the same time transforming the nature of his image through dramatic light effects and the rich impastos of his paint.
Most fundamentally, however, Rembrandt returned to Raphael’s prototype because he found in it a vehicle for expressing his perception of himself as a learned painter, a theme that in one way or another underlies a number of his late self-portraits, particularly his magnificent paintings in the Frick Collection, c. 1658, and in the Iveagh Bequest, Kenwood, c. 1665. In all three of these works Rembrandt projects a strikingly positive self-image, in which allusions to his self-esteem as an artist are conveyed through pose, costume, and expression.
Arthur K. Wheelock Jr.
April 24, 2014
