Self-Portrait etching at a window, 1648

About the Work

In a 1639 self-portrait Rembrandt adopted the pose of the extravagant parvenu. A decade later, in his last official self-portrait, an etching from 1648, we see him as a serious artist concentrating on his work - probably an etching. He is dressed in a mantle and hat of the kind he wore in his studio. Rembrandt has built up the delicate intermediate facial tones in a layered combination of etching with a burin and dry-point technique. His face emerges from the darkness through the light streaming in from the left.