Автопортрет в берете и золотой цепи

In 1633 Rembrandt was 27, newly moved from Leiden to Amsterdam and already the portrait painter everyone in the city wanted. He put himself on this oval panel in a velvet toque with a heavy gold chain laid across his chest. Chains like that were given by kings to the painters who served them. Titian had one from the emperor Charles V, Rubens one from Philip IV of Spain. Rembrandt had no such honour and never received one. He bought chains at auction as studio properties and wore them in his own portraits anyway. The panel later belonged to the duc de Choiseul, a minister of Louis XV, and then to the duc de Brissac, who commanded the king's guard and was killed by a crowd at Versailles in 1792. It was seized at his daughter's house and entered the Louvre in 1794.