tour 3 of 11
Rembrandt the printmaker
Rembrandt van Rijn, Self-portrait leaning on a stone sill, an etching
Rembrandt here portrays himself in Renaissance
attire, taking inspiration from two sixteenth-century works,
Raphael's Portrait of Baldassare
Castiglione, now in the Musée du Louvre,
Paris, and Titian's so-called Portrait
of Ariosto, now in the National Gallery,
London. In Rembrandt's day both these paintings were owned
by an Amsterdam collector, Alfonso Lopez, and in 1639, the same
year as this etching, Rembrandt made a sketch after the painting by
Raphael (the sketch is now in the Albertina,
Vienna).
By following the
example of these earlier artists, Rembrandt probably wanted to be
seen in the same context, and were it not for the historical
anachronism, it would be tempting to describe the resulting
self-portrait as 'Romantic'. Rembrandt depicts
himself fictionally, in the nostalgic garb of his Renaissance
heroes - not just those from Italy, but with echoes of northern
European self-portraits by artists such as Albrecht Dürer and Lucas
van Leyden. He took this approach several times in the 1630s, and
part of his intention was presumably to produce an image that was a
worthy emulation and even improvement on its artistic ancestors,
especially those in Lopez's collection that were widely
known in
Amsterdam.
Rembrandt's
style is here rather detailed, and he brilliantly evokes the
textures of his velvet cap and his hair, which to judge from other
self-portraits of the period he has here lengthened - it was
normally trimmed at the level of his ear.