Autoportrait aux yeux ombrés

Rembrandt painted this in 1634, the year he married Saskia and set himself up as Amsterdam's rising portraitist. He was 28, and he shows himself in old-fashioned scholar's dress, a velvet beret pulled low so its brim throws his eyes into shadow. For much of its life you could not have seen that face at all. Not long after he finished it, another hand painted over the picture, turning the young Rembrandt into an older man in Polish-style costume, and it stayed hidden that way for centuries. Only a run of cleanings through the 20th century, finished around 2000, stripped the additions away and brought back the self-portrait underneath.