# Self-Portrait [View the canonical artwork record]() ## Artwork - Artist: [REMBRANDT Harmenszoon van Rijn]() - Date: 1601-1650 - Technique: Oil on canvas, 114 x 94 cm ## Commentary <a href="\#" onClick="w=window.open \('/database/glossary/note03.html', 'newWin', 'scrollbars=yes,status=no,dependent=yes,screenX=0,screenY=0,width=300,height=400'\);w.opener=this;w.focus\(\);return false">Catalogue number:</a> Bredius 52. This is one of the noblest and most poetic of all Rembrandt's self-portraits; of the three-quarter length ones it is also among the most personal. The head is fully worked up, the body much less so, while the hands are scarcely indicated at all. Being an 'unfinished' self-portrait, it would not have been signed or dated \(though its authenticity is unquestionable\). In conception, it still shows much of the breadth of form which the artist had favoured in the late 1650s, both in his subject pictures and in other self-portraits. On the other hand, the forms have become flatter and the facial expression less aggressive. It is as if Rembrandt had wished to show himself as more forlorn. The mysterious circles on the wall, though clearly behind the artist's head, rein- force the sense of a composition conceived as a surface design. No one has yet succeeded in explaining these shapes satisfactorily. ## Related artworks - [A black drummer and commander mounted on mules; riding in profile]() - [A child being taught to walk]() - [A cottage beneath trees]() - [A girl sleeping]() - [A Man Laughing]() - [A man making water]() - [A Peddler Selling Spectacles \(The Allegory of Sight\)]() - [A Polish Nobleman]() - [A Scholar]() - [A two-humped camel]() - [A woman in Zeeland costume, from the back]() - [A woman in Zeeland costume, from the front]() ## Attribution [Web Gallery of Art]()