Self-Portrait

In the village of Middenbeemster, north of Amsterdam, a schoolmaster named Pieter Carelsz Fabritius painted on the side, and three of his sons became painters too. Two of them matter for this canvas, Carel, born in 1622, and Barent, two years younger. The museum presents the picture as Carel's self-portrait from about 1645, a young man who has dressed himself in flamboyant costume in emulation of his teacher Rembrandt. That identification is not settled. The 2004 Fabritius exhibition at the Mauritshuis in The Hague catalogued it as Carel's self-portrait, and the art historian Lisa Pincus, reviewing that catalogue, doubted it and gave the canvas to Barent instead. Others have suggested a third reading, that the face is Carel's but the hand is his brother's. So the same young man could be Carel painting himself, Barent painting himself, or Barent painting Carel. Barent did paint his own face. His earliest dated picture is a self-portrait of 1650, now in the Städel Museum in Frankfurt.