“Life etches itself onto our faces as we get older, displaying our violence, excesses or kindnesses.”
—Rembrandt
Hey, all people!
Earlier this week, I spent a while trying upon the 23-year-old artist Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn, depicted within the self-portrait featured above, which now hangs within the Dutch Room of Boston’s Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. Painted in 1628, the masterwork is one in every of greater than 80 of the artist’s self-portraits which might be identified to exist.
For many who have learn the guide, The Gardner Heist: The True Story of the World’s Largest Unsolved Artwork Theft, you could recall that three work have been stolen from the museum’s Dutch Room on the morning after St. Patrick’s Day in 1990 — Vermeer’s “The Live performance,” Flinck’s “Panorama With An Obelisk,” and Rembrandt’s “Christ In The Storm On The Sea Of Galilee” haven’t been seen in additional than 30 years. It’s a miracle that the artist’s self-portrait, one in every of his earliest, was left untouched throughout a theft that noticed a complete of 13 artistic endeavors misplaced.
Whereas definitely not distinctive to me, Rembrandt has lengthy been one in every of my favourite artists. I’ve been lucky to view his works in museums world wide, and I’ve made it some extent to hunt out his self-portraits. You’ll discover the biggest collections of these work in Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum (unsurprisingly) and the Nationwide Gallery in London. An previous good friend, who studied artwork historical past at college, as soon as shared the Rembrandt quote I’ve included on this publication — upon listening to it, I used to be impressed with a selected curiosity to hint the event of his self-portraiture… I ponder, do the marks and wrinkles that start to look on his aged face in later works replicate a lifetime of violence, excesses, or kindness?
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