Self-Portrait in a Black Cap

Around 1637 Rembrandt was in his early thirties, newly prosperous in Amsterdam and painting himself often. Here he put on a costume rather than his own clothes. The fur cloak and the double gold chain belong to the previous century, and the black velvet cap is studio dress, not something a Dutch townsman of his day would wear on the street. He was trying on the look of an older, courtly kind of sitter. There is a second picture hiding under this one. Beneath the surface lies an unfinished portrait of a woman that he painted over. The panel itself was cut down later, probably in the 1830s, to fit a frame with a rounded top, so what you see is smaller than what Rembrandt first laid out.