戴金链的裸头自画像

Rembrandt was 27 when he painted this, and two years into Amsterdam. He had come from Leiden in 1631, worked out of the dealer Hendrick Uylenburgh's house, and by 1632 the Anatomy Lesson of Doctor Tulp had gone up and the city's merchants were queuing for portraits. The gold chain is the part worth knowing about. Chains like it were given by princes to painters they favoured, and there is no record of any ruler ever giving Rembrandt one. He kept chains in the studio as properties and put them on in his own portraits, which is a fairly direct way of claiming a standing he had not been granted. The Louvre hangs a second self-portrait of the same year close by, in which he wears a velvet cap and another chain.