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

The last scene in Zuckmayer’s screenplay also depicts the creation of the
Self Portrait as Zeuxis. However, the screenplay closes rather differently than the
film. Here, “Rembrandt” does not end in the company of the thriving young
painters, but in his attic in the company of the drunkard Frans Hals, a former
painter who has renounced his art and lives in a poor-house. Before they toast,
“Rembrandt” begins to quote Solomon’s wisdom, but Hals reinterprets the final
words, “that there is nothing better than that a man shall rejoice in his works,”
toasting not to work but to “die Fröhlichkeit” (joy/happiness) and “das Lachen”
(laughter). “Rembrandt” joins the toast, echoing “Das Lachen – am Anfang und
am Ende” (“Laughter – at the beginning and at the end,” 115).
Does Zuckmayer refer to the 1630 etching of Rembrandt with a laughing
expression, the Self Portrait, Smiling (“am Anfang”) and the later Self Portrait as
Zeuxis (“am Ende”)? In that case, this allusion also refers us back to the beginning
of the screenplay, thus indicating the framing of the text by two different works.
However, this reinterpretation of the first scene as an ekphrasis of the early
etching still does not resolve the discrepancies of the original ekphrasis, because
this etching matches the auctioneer’s description even less than the later painting.
In other words, the frame provided by the Self Portrait as Zeuxis does not provide
closure to the text but rather emphasizes the disparities between the textual
ekphrases and the actual art works. The frame thus exposes the multiple gaps
between the screenplay’s self portraits of “Rembrandt,” Rembrandt’s own
projection of his identity in his self portraits, and his historical self.
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