自画像

Fabritius painted this around 1645, in his early 20s, fresh out of Rembrandt's Amsterdam studio. Of all the master's pupils he was the one who refused to simply copy him. Rembrandt set faces glowing out of deep shadow. Fabritius does the opposite here, lifting his own features softly against a pale, textured wall, a lighting idea he would keep working at for the rest of his short life. He was building a real career in Delft when, in 1654, the city's gunpowder magazine exploded and destroyed much of his studio and most of his work, killing him at 32. Only about a dozen of his paintings survive. This early look at himself, still close to his teacher, is one of the few faces of the man we have.