Self-portrait with Feathered Beret

In the winter of 1896 the Boston collector Isabella Stewart Gardner received an ultimatum through her adviser, the art historian Bernard Berenson. This panel could be hers, but if it was not sold by 18 February it would go to the National Gallery in London. She cabled back two words, “Yes Rembrandt.” It was her first Rembrandt, and it became the cornerstone of the museum she was planning. He had painted it in 1629, at 23, still in his home town of Leiden, dressing himself up in a plumed beret and a gold chain. On the night of 18 March 1990 two thieves pulled it off the wall of the Dutch Room and tried to prise the oak panel out of its heavy gilded frame. When it would not come loose they left it on the floor and took her other two Rembrandt paintings instead. It hangs again on the north wall of that room, facing the empty frames.