Portrait of Titus van Rijn

For a long time this was taken for a self-portrait of Rembrandt as a young man. Only since 1873 has it been read as his son Titus, the one child of his marriage to Saskia to reach adulthood. By the time Rembrandt painted it in Amsterdam, in the early 1660s, the household had already been through bankruptcy, and Titus and the painter's companion Hendrickje had set up a small art business that employed Rembrandt himself and shielded him from his creditors. It is probably the last likeness of Titus we can be sure of. He died in 1668, most likely of plague, at 27, and his father followed him a year later. The Louvre, which owns it, notes a certain heaviness in the handling and wonders whether Titus, who painted a little himself, had a hand in his own portrait.