Visiting the Age of Rembrandt

We thought we knew him, with that searching unsettling gaze of his, the man with a peasant face who became the master of light and shadow, saturated color and probing psychology. The guises in which he presented himself varied greatly: here as a soldier, there as a prince, now as a beggar or as a king before the Christ-Child. At times he stared, scowled, glared or held us in his gaze, but he never smiled. And he let his age show, scrutinizing himself as no other artist has before or since, studying not simply his own soul but the human condition. In one self-portrait we come before his deep-set dark eyes, bulging nose, full lips and double chin painted at the nadir of his career shortly after his insolvency; yet he chooses neither dejection nor self-assertion in response. The left side of his face is shadowed, the furrowed brow and fleshy right cheek marvels of suggestion. A black velvet beret symbolizing his craft gives the only touch of élan. It is Rembrandt von Rijn, the miller’s son from Leiden, bankrupt in Amsterdam—the painter as Everyman.

This Rembrandt self-portrait hangs in the fifth gallery of the sumptuous exhibition “This article appears in November 12 2007.