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

aspirations, it seems to portray his artistic ambitions and his emulation of painters
of the past. Not only does this self portrait show connections to Raphael’s Portrait
of Baldassare Castiglione (before 1516) and Titian’s Portrait of a Man (Ariosto)
(c. 1512), two eminent Italian Renaissance masters, but moreover, Rembrandt’s
pose recalls that of Albrecht Dürer in his well-known Prado Self Portrait of 1498.
Furthermore, the clothing was “carefully composed from a variety of examples in
prints, in particular “portraits believed to depict Lucas van Leyden,” a Dutch artist
active between 1508 and 1533 (Rembrandt 173). This self portrait, then,
represents Rembrandt’s emulation of his great predecessors, both Italian and
Northern European artists, thus asserting “his standing in the grand lineage of
European painting” (Chapman 70).
Three Self Portraits as Painter
It was only in the 1660s that Rembrandt portrayed himself as painter,
wearing working clothes and with the tools of his craft. The first of these is the
Self Portrait at the Easel, from 1660 (Paris, Musée du Louvre). Here, Rembrandt
appears to be seated in front of a wooden panel on the right of the canvas, turned
toward the viewer with his palette in this left hand and his maulstick in the right.
While his clothing “contains sixteenth-century elements” (Rembrandt 211), his
white cap is contemporary, and somewhat resembles the one he wears in the later
Self Portrait as Zeuxis and the Self Portrait with Two Circles (c.1665-9) in which
he also depicts himself as painter. His face appears less round here and more
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