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

Thus, as was the case with the Self Portrait at the Easel, Rembrandt here
expresses his ambition to identify and compete with a famous painter from the
past. Furthermore, this anecdote about Zeuxis must have struck Rembrandt
particularly because it showed him that Zeuxis was not only a painter of ideal
beauty, but that he, like Rembrandt himself, also painted ugly old women without
embellishments. Once again Rembrandt is asserting himself as painter. Although,
as the catalog Rembrandt by Himself claims, there is no conclusive evidence that
Rembrandt’s work attracted criticism “of his stubborn refusal to idealise reality”
(219), it is still conceivable that he laughs in the face of the viewer, expressing his
superiority to (and defiance of) a tradition of painting only ideal beauty.
Rembrandt has portrayed himself as painter or in clothing reminiscent of
earlier painters in other later self portraits. For example in the Self Portrait with
Two Circles (1665-9, London, Kenwood House), he faces the viewer, palette and
paintbrushes in hand, and in the Self Portrait at the Age of 63 (1669, London,
National Gallery), he had originally held a paintbrush which he later painted out,
and represents himself in apparel from fifteenth and sixteenth century painters. In
his very last Self Portrait (1669, Mauritshuis, The Hague), however, Rembrandt is
neither wearing any specific clothing, nor does he depict himself as painter
(although he did have a painter’s cap in an earlier stage of the work, which he
later painted out and replaced with a “lopsided turban” (Rembrandt 231). The
artist clearly looks older here than in other self portraits, and the painting itself
appears as if it was left unfinished, which, together with the fact that it was for a
long time the only self portrait known to have been painted in the year of
169