Autoportrait au manteau de fourrure, chaîne d'or et boucle d'oreille

Rembrandt painted himself here in 1655, dressed like a man at the top of his trade — a heavy fur coat, a gold chain across his chest, a gleam of gold at his ear. It is worth knowing what came next. Within a year he was insolvent, forced to give up his fine house in Amsterdam and sell off the art and curiosities he had spent a fortune collecting. The gold chain is partly a fiction. Working painters wore no such badge, but the great masters before him, Titian and Rubens among them, had received gold chains from princes, and Rembrandt liked to grant himself the same honour in paint.