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

the renowned artist from classical antiquity, the Greek painter Zeuxis of the late
fifth century BC. But this interpretation and the consequent change of titles have
gained currency only during the last couple of decades, after Albert Blankert’s
influential article on this self portrait. 189 Moreover, while earlier critics have
considered it to be one of Rembrandt’s last, if not the last self portrait, the recent
exhibition Rembrandt by Himself has dated it earlier, around 1662, thus dispelling
the notion that Rembrandt “was alluding here to his own approaching death”
(219).
Part of the trouble with this self portrait is the fact that in its present form,
the painting is not in its original state, but was probably cropped at the left and
seems to have had later additions (Blankert 33). Rembrandt represents himself
here with a painter’s cap, a mantle, a medallion around his neck, and a maulstick
in one of his hands, thus clearly stylizing himself as painter. He is turning to the
viewer with a laughing expression. On the left side of the canvas, part of the
painting he is working on can be seen, yet because of its vagueness and the
possible cropping, this figure has been variously identified as a herm, or
Terminus, the God of Death; 190 as the bust of the weeping philosopher Heraclitus,
painted by the laughing Democritus; 191 and as an old woman, painted by the
legendary classical painter Zeuxis (cf. Blankert).
189 Albert Blankert, “Rembrandt, Zeuxis, and Ideal Beauty,” Album Amicorum J.G. van Gelder,
eds. J. G. van Gelder and J. Bruyn (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1973) 32-39.
190 Cf. Jan Bialstocki, “Rembrandt’s Terminus,” Wallraf-Richartz-Jahrbuch 28 (1966): 49-60.
191 Wolfgang Stechow, “Rembrandt-Democritus,” The Art Quarterly 7.4 (1944): 232-38 takes up
an earlier critic, F. Schmidt-Degener, who had suggested an identification of Rembrandt with the
philosopher Democritus painting Heraclitus. This interpretation was also accepted and supported
by Simon Schama in his influential biography of the artist (676-77), and is most likely the one
known to Zuckmayer and Korda, as Schmidt-Degener’s book Rembrandt und der holländische
Barock was translated into German in 1928.
167