Self-portrait

By about 1660 Rembrandt had lost nearly everything. His large house in Amsterdam and his collection of art and curiosities had been sold a few years earlier to satisfy his creditors, and he was renting rooms across town. To keep working, his companion Hendrickje and his son Titus set up a small art business that employed him, so his earnings stayed beyond the creditors' reach. This is one of the self-portraits from those years, and it is tiny, barely larger than a hand. He turns his face half into shadow, so the eyes sit in darkness and you lean in to find them. Over his life he painted himself something like 40 times, more than almost any artist before him, and the late ones like this are the least flattering. The head is built up in thick, dragged strokes, with only a suggestion of a collar below.