Copyright by Laura Mareike Sager 2006 - The University of Texas at ...

Chapter 5:
From Screenplay to Film: Rembrandt’s Self-Portraits and Social
Identity Construction through Ekphrasis
INTRODUCTION
Although the actual number of Rembrandt’s self portraits is still debated,
the Dutch seventeenth-century artist represented himself more than any artist
before, and possibly after him, in at least forty paintings, about thirty-one
etchings, and several drawings. 175 But just as their exact number is controversial,
so is their motivation. While H. Perry Chapman claims they are largely “internally
motivated” studies of “penetrating self-scrutiny” (3) in a period of “rising
individualism” (4), Ernst van de Wetering argues “that the prevailing view of the
self portrait as a means for ‘self-examination’ is an anachronism when applied to
the period before 1800” (19). Moreover, as he explains, the term “self portrait”
did not exist in the seventeenth-century. Instead, he proposes to see Rembrandt’s
self portraits as a means of self-promotion: it “provided the purchaser with both
the portrait of a celebrated artist and a display of the mastery that had made him
famous in the first place” (30). It is certainly true, as Chapman also recognizes,
that the enormous number of self portraits is also a projection of Rembrandt’s self
175 The number of self portraits varies greatly, because Rembrandt has depicted himself not only
in traditional self portraits, but there are also numerous occasions in which he has inserted his
likeness into a historical or biblical painting. Not all of these are recognized as self portraits by all
Rembrandt scholars. The above numbers come from Ernst van de Wetering, “The Multiple
Functions of Rembrandt’s Self Portraits,” Rembrandt by Himself, eds. Christopher White and
Quentin Buvelot (London: National Gallery; The Hague: Royal Cabinet of Paintings Mauritshuis,
1999) 10. Similarly, Perry H. Chapman sets the total number of self portraits at “at least seventyfive”
(Rembrandt's Self-Portraits: A Study in Seventeenth-Century Identity [Princeton, N.J.:
Princeton UP, 1990] 3).
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