Rembrandt, Self-portrait with beret, wide-eyed, 1630 That is, without trying to produce something beautiful or glorious. His way of representing what was traditionally considered ugly allowed the following generations of artists to have the courage to show reality as they wished. Today, his sketchbooks reveal what interested Rembrandt the most: bypassers on the street, beggers… Those who were voluntarily forgotten by society. This way, the artist establishes proximity between the viewer and the scene, an unusual thing for the time. Thus, he did not follow any rules regarding the appearance of his portraits Rembrandt painted all types of people, letting wrinkles and imperfections show. He represented his scenes’ figures as if they were part of any ordinary family. Religious scenes were still some of the art world’s favorite subjects and even with those, Rembrandt did not glorify anybody.
So far, the aim of painting was to imitate nature, but also to embellish and improve it. Inevitably, Rembrandt’s commitment to truthful representation did not win over the entirety of 17th-century society, and his style was often considered ugly. Rembrandt, The Anatomy Lesson of Doctor Nicolaes Tulp, 1632 Representing the Everyday Without Artifice
Through this tradition, Rembrandt introduces the artist’s face as its own object of study. His experiments through the art of portraiture are one of the ways in which Rembrandt distinguishes himself from his contemporaries, for whom self-portrait remained rare or deceptive. For Rembrandt, paintings had to be faithful to the reflection of the mirror, and he followed this principle all throughout his career. However, it is not by vanity that the artist paints himself, but by interest for authentic representation.Īlthough he enjoys dressing up and playing with his appearance, he never idealizes himself and polishes his technique in an attempt to depict himself as faithfully as possible.
Indeed, the self-portrait was at the heart of Rembrandt’s work: he got into the habit of painting himself several times a year so that one can observe him mature, get old, and modify each wrinkle on his face as time passes. More than any other artist of his time, the face of Rembrandt seems carved into art history.
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