Self-portrait leaning on a stone sill

The Dutch artist Rembrandt was unique amongst seventeenth-century artists in his exploration of self-portraiture. As well as a large number of painted self-portraits, he made some thirty-two self-portrait etchings. Stylistically, the etchings mirror Rembrandt’s changing fortunes and emotional states throughout his career. 

This work, the largest of his etched self-portraits, represents the thirty-three-year-old Rembrandt at the height of his career as Amsterdam’s leading artist. He regards the viewer with an unflinching gaze and confident air, presenting himself as a self-assured ’Renaissance’ man, dressed in grand clothing from this earlier time rather than in contemporary Dutch clothing, with its stiff white collars.

Rembrandt’s Renaissance appearance is not accidental: this etching was inspired by two Renaissance portraits seen by him in Amsterdam that year, by Titian and Raphael. It is generally thought that in this work Rembrandt was rivalling and hoping to surpass his Italian artistic predecessors.

Julie Robinson, Senior Curator Prints, Drawings and Photographs