Le Porte-étendard

Rembrandt painted this in 1636, at 30, not long after moving from his hometown of Leiden to Amsterdam to make his name. He put himself in the costume of a standard-bearer, the man who carried a militia company's flag, placing himself in a long Dutch line of such portraits. It was also an advertisement. The most coveted commission an Amsterdam painter could win was a group portrait of a civic militia company, and here Rembrandt shows what he could do with the swagger and silk of that world. Six years later he won exactly that commission and produced The Night Watch. In 2022 the Dutch state bought this self-portrait for 175 million euros to keep it in the country.