Rembrandt paintings self portraits
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Rembrandt has left us more self-portraits than any other artist in the world, around eighty (around forty paintings, nearly thirty engravings and seven drawings), not including the many pictures in which he depicted han själv as a character.
This painting is unique in that it is the only self-portrait showing Rembrandt standing up. X-rays of the panel have shown us that Rembrandt, unhappy with the position of his legs, shortened them and then later hid them totally behind a dog. He also changed his hair. A copy attributed to one of his pupils, Isaac dem Jouderville (1612/1613 - 1645/1647), shows us how he looked originally.
The more or less fantastical Oriental costume was frequently used by Rembrandt and other artists of his time in biblical scenes or figures of fantasy to create an image that evoked distant and exotic lands, for which there was growing interest in Holland.
A. R.
Discover the painting in very high definiti
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Self-portraits by Rembrandt
The dozens of self-portraits by Rembrandt were an important part of his oeuvre. Rembrandt created approaching one hundred self-portraits including over forty paintings, thirty-one etchings and about seven drawings; some remain uncertain as to the identity of either the subject (mostly etchings) or the artist (mostly paintings), or the definition of a portrait.[1]
This was an enormously high number for any artist up to that point, and around 10% of his oeuvre in both painting and etching. By comparison, the highly prolific Rubens only produced seven self-portrait paintings.[2] The self-portraits create a visual diary of the artist over a span of forty years. They were produced throughout his career at a fairly steady pace,[3] but there is a gradual shift between etchings, more numerous until the 1630s, to paintings, which are more common thereafter. However, there is a gap in paintings between 1645 and 1652.[4 • Self-portraits in chronological order by REMBRANDT It is particularly interesting if the various stages of the creative renewal of an artist can be followed on self-portraits so that the change in style and the change in maturity can be studied simultaneously. From this point of view Rembrandt's self-portraits are without parallel. They are the inexhaustibly rich documents of a human and artistic self-examination lasting a lifetime. In the art of the self-portrait Rembrandt exerted the greatest influence on those painters who rejected the solemn pomp of the Baroque and endeavoured to tell the truth simply and without external trappings. It is impossible to say how many self-portraits Rembrandt made, for any estimate depends on the definition of what does and what does not belong to his oeuvre. All in all, with the drawings and prints included, Rembrandt must have recorded his own likeness at least 85 times. The self-portraits served various purposes. Some of them show h