© 2020 The Leiden CollectionSelf-Portrait with Shaded Eyes
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Self-Portrait with Shaded Eyes
Rembrandt van Rijn
(Leiden 1606 – 1669 Amsterdam)1634
oil on panel
71.1 x 56 cm
signed and dated in dark paint, lower rightquadrant: “Rembrandt. f. / 1634”
RR-110How to cite
DeWitt, David. “Self-Portrait with Shaded Eyes” (2017). In The Leiden Collection Catalogue, 2nd ed. Edited by
Arthur K. Wheelock Jr. New York, 2017–20. https://theleidencollection.com/artwork/self-portrait-with-shadedeyes/ (archived May 2020).
A PDF of every version of this entry is available in this Online Catalogue's Archive, and the Archive ismanaged by a permanent URL. New versions are added only when a substantive change to the narrative
occurs.

© 2020 The Leiden CollectionSelf-Portrait with Shaded Eyes
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This image of the young Rembrandt van Rijn, proud in bearing as he gazes

Comparative Figures

directly out at the viewer from within an oval framing device, is not easily
forgotten. With eyes gently shaded by his beret’s soft brim, Rembrandt’s
gaze is compelling in its directness, yet one senses a restless mind that is
only partially revealed. One cannot help but stare back, and thus become
engaged in silent communication with the artist. It is a strange phenomenon,
but suddenly, without recognizing the moment in which it occurs, the physicalreality of the painted image blurs, and the psychological rapport between theviewer and Rembrandt begins.
Rembrandt’s expression reinforces the impression that he was not only aself-assured young man, uncompromising in his approach to the world, butalso an enigmatic individual whose true personality he kept largely to himself.
The painting seems so characteristic of Rembrandt’s work from the early
1630s that it is easy to overlook how striking its psychological ambiguity must

Fig 1. Rembrandt van Rijn, SelfPortrait, 1632, oil on panel, 63.5 ×
46.3 cm, Glasgow Museums, The
Burrell Collection, inv. 35.600

have appeared to his contemporaries. Twenty-first-century viewers havecome to judge Rembrandt’s character and artistic personality through thesum total of his life and work. Numerous paintings, drawings and etchings,
as well as documents, stories and myths, have left an indelible impression of
his extraordinary artistic achievements through a long, memorable career.
Therefore, it is difficult to place oneself in Amsterdam in 1634, imagining how
such an image would have been received by contemporaries familiar with a
far more descriptive portrait tradition.
Rembrandt began exploring the expressive character of self-portraits in
Leiden in the late 1620s, and he continued to depict himself in paintings,
drawings and etchings throughout his career. Indeed, self-portraiture
constitutes around one-tenth of his total surviving oeuvre.[1] He incorporated
a wide range of pictorial effects and devices in these works, far more so thanFig 2. Photograph of Self-Portrait
with Shaded Eyes, RR-110, ca.
1935, with additions (photographcourtesy of Martin Bijl)

he did in his commissioned portraits. The endless variety and invention of his
self-portraits is such that no two look quite alike.
A number of Rembrandt’s early self-portraits relate to the tronies that he and
Jan Lievens (1607–74) developed in Leiden, and they feature the kinds ofemotional expressions, fancy costumes, loose paint handling, and striking
light effects evident in those works. Echoes of Rembrandt’s early tronies areseen here in the artist’s expression, the strong lighting effects, and his
imaginative costume, all of which differ from the formal presentation of his
Self-Portrait of 1632 in Glasgow (fig 1).[2]Whereas in that Self-Portrait

Rembrandt closely followed the fashion among Amsterdam’s burghers by

Fig 3. Rembrandt van Rijn, SelfPortrait with Raised Sabre, 1634,© 2020 The Leiden CollectionSelf-Portrait with Shaded Eyes
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wearing a wide-brimmed hat and a flat ruff over a black coat, in the selfportrait in the Leiden Collection he has donned a beret, which by the 1620s
was considered old-fashioned, although it continued to be favored byetching, state 2 of 2, 125 × 103
mm, British Museum, London, inv.
1973-U-840, © Trustees of the
British Museum

artists.[3] The fur-trimmed robe he wears here also descends from sixteenthcentury dress and relates to the tabbaard, a type of fur-lined cloak favored byscholars.[4]This combination of beret and fur-trimmed robe may indicate that Rembrandt
sought to portray himself within the framework of a scholarly and artistic
tradition. Given that he painted Self-Portrait with Shaded Eyes in the year of
his marriage to Saskia van Uylenburgh, it is likely that he wanted to present
himself as a sincere and legitimate artist-suitor, of a type different from artists
who were characterized by such slurs as “hoe schilder hoe wilder” (the moreof a painter the wilder he is).[5] Rembrandt’s restrained modeling of his
features in this painting also speaks to the thoughtfulness of his selfrepresentation. As Ernst van de Wetering has emphasized, Rembrandt
carefully modeled his flesh tones to capture the effects of reflected light in

Fig 4. Photograph of Self-Portrait
with Shaded Eyes, RR-110, ca.
1950, with additions partly
removed (photograph courtesy ofMartin Bijl)

shaded areas, such as around the eyes.[6]Remarkably, despite its compelling qualities, Rembrandt’s self-portrait was
entirely overpainted by another hand soon after its completion, and it was
only in the late twentieth century that the master’s original image wasrevealed once again. A photograph from the mid-1930s indicates that the
overpainted image depicted an exotic middle-aged man with long, dark, curly
hair, a moustache, and a thin beard (fig 2).[7] He wore a fur coat and a tall
Polish-style fur hat, a so-called kalpac trimmed with gold, similar to
Rembrandt’s 1634 etched Self-Portrait with Raised Sabre (fig 3).[8] He also
wore a golden chain wound twice over his mantle, in a manner similar to thatin Rembrandt’s Self-Portrait in the Wallace Collection, also from the 1630s.[9]From the 1950s to the 1980s some of the overpainting was removed (fig 4),
which revealed the existence of the beret under the kalpac. Technicalresearch undertaken by the Rembrandt Research Project in the 1990s

Fig 5. Photograph of Self-Portrait
with Shaded Eyes, RR-110, ca.
1980, with further additions
removed (photograph courtesy ofMartin Bijl)

posited that the additions had likely been made in Rembrandt’s workshop
around 1636/37, only a few years after the creation of the original painting.
The remaining areas of overpaint were subsequently taken off with a scalpel
by conservator Martin Bijl (fig 5).
Just why this repainting of Self-Portrait with Shaded Eyes was undertaken is
not known, but it may have occurred if Rembrandt’s painting had not
immediately found a buyer. In any event, it seems unlikely that the masterwould have authorized this repainting. A more probable scenario would be© 2020 The Leiden CollectionSelf-Portrait with Shaded Eyes
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that the panel remained in the workshop of Hendrick van Uylenburgh after
Rembrandt’s departure in 1635, and that Van Uylenburgh decided to update
the image. Van Uylenburgh may well have charged his new head painterFig 6. Govaert Flinck, Rembrandt
as a Shepherd with Flute andStaff, 1636, oil on canvas, 74.5 ×
64 cm, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam,
inv. SK-A-3451

Govaert Flinck with the task of turning this Rembrandt self-portrait into atronie of an exotic figure.[10] Flinck clearly knew Rembrandt’s self-portrait in
its original format, for in 1636 he used it as a basis for an image of his former
master as an amorous shepherd, as part of a pair with a shepherdess (fig 6).[11] The loose handling of the repainting on Rembrandt’s Self-Portrait with
Shaded Eyes corresponds to Flinck’s stylistic development around 1637.
The fascinating transformation of this sensitive self-portrait into an exotic andsomewhat frightening individual, and back again, serves as a powerfulreminder of how works of art often have long and complicated lives thatreflect differences of taste and values over the years.

- David DeWitt, 2017

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Endnotes

1. More than 80 self-portraits by Rembrandt are known today, including some 40 paintings,
30 etchings, and 7 drawings; Ernst van de Wetering, “Rembrandts verborgen
zelfportretten/Rembrandt’s Hidden Self-Portraits,” Kroniek van het Rembrandthuis 1 (2002):
2.

On

Rembrandt’s

self-portraits,see

Christopher

White

and

QuentinBuvelot,eds., Rembrandt by Himself (Exh. cat. London, National Gallery; The Hague, Mauritshuis)(London, 1999), and Stichting Foundation Rembrandt Research Project, A Corpus of
Rembrandt Paintings, vol. 4, Self-Portraits, ed. Ernst van de Wetering (Dordrecht, 2005),
Addendum IV. See also H. Perry Chapman, Rembrandt’s Self-Portraits: A Study inSeventeenth-Century Identity (Princeton, 1990), and the reassessment of her analysis inMarieke de Winkel, Fashion and Fancy: Dress and Meaning in Rembrandt’s Paintings(Amsterdam, 2006), passim, as well as in White and Buvelot, Rembrandt by Himself, passim,
and Ernst van de Wetering et al., A Corpus of Rembrandt Paintings, vol. 4: Self-Portraits.
Stichting Foundation Rembrandt Research Project (Dordrecht, 2005), passim.
2. See Josua Bruyn et al., A Corpus of Rembrandt Paintings, vol. 2: 1631–1634, Stichting
Foundation Rembrandt Research Project (The Hague, 1986), 2: no. A 58.
3. Marieke de Winkel, Fashion and Fancy: Dress and Meaning in Rembrandt’s Paintings(Amsterdam, 2006), 164f. Although Rembrandt may have worn berets on occasion, he alsotended to include them in self-portraits in combination with fanciful or imaginary componentsof dress, such as the Asian patterned silk scarf and heavy gold chains. See, for example, his
1629 Self-Portrait in The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston, oil on panel, 89.7 × 73.5
cm, acc. P21n6.
4. Marieke de Winkel, “‘Eene der deftigsten dragten’: The Iconography of the Tabbaard and theSense of Tradition in Dutch Seventeenth-Century Portraiture,” in Beeld en zelfbeeld in de
Nederlandse kunst, 1550–1750/Image and Self-Image in Netherlandish Art, 1550–1750,
Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek 46 (Zwolle, 1995): 146–66.
5. It is possibly significant that Rembrandt’s assistant at this time, Govaert Flinck (1615–60), hadconfronted this stigma as he sought to become an artist: see Arnold Houbraken, De grooteschouburgh der Nederlantsche konstschilders en schilderessen, 3 vols. (Amsterdam
1718–21; revised edition published in The Hague, 1753; reprinted in Amsterdam, 1976),
2:18–19.
6. Ernst van de Wetering, “Rembrandts verborgen zelfportretten/Rembrandt’s Hidden SelfPortraits,” Kroniek van het Rembrandthuis (2002): 15.
7. See the account of the assessment and removal of these additions in Ernst van de Wetering
et al., A Corpus of Rembrandt Paintings, vol. 4: Self-Portraits, Stichting Foundation© 2020 The Leiden CollectionSelf-Portrait with Shaded Eyes
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Rembrandt Research Project (Dordrecht, 2005), 617–26, no. IV Addendum 2; first published
as an article: Ernst van de Wetering, “Rembrandts verborgen zelfportretten/Rembrandt’s
Hidden Self-Portraits,” Kroniek van het Rembrandthuis (2002): 16–25.
8. On the Polish character of this head covering, see Michael Zell, Reframing Rembrandt: Jews
and the Christian Image in Seventeenth-Century Amsterdam (Berkeley, 2002), 46–48, andAlfred Rubens, A History of Jewish Costume, 2nd ed. (London, 1973), 104–5.
9. Rembrandt van Rijn, Self-Portrait, second half of the 1630s, oil on panel, 64 × 49 cm, The
Wallace Collection, London, inv. no. P 52; see: Ernst van de Wetering et al., A Corpus of
Rembrandt Paintings, vol. 4: Self-Portraits, Stichting Foundation Rembrandt Research Project(Dordrecht, 2005), 4: 604, Corrigenda III C 96.
10. This assessment draws support from Joachim von Moltke’s attribution of the painting in its
overpainted state to Flinck. See Joachim Wolfgang von Moltke, Govaert Flinck, 1615–1660(Amsterdam, 1965), 246–47, under no. 101. A somewhat similar painting by Flinck is his Bustof a Young Man in a Plumed Beret, 1637, oil on canvas, 73 × 57.5 cm, The State Hermitage
Museum, St. Petersburg, inv. 782 (see Portrait of Antonie Coopal, RR-103, fig. 6).
11. This painting is a pendant to Flinck’s Shepherdess, 1636, oil on canvas, 74.5 × 63.5 cm,
Herzog Anton Ulrich-Museum, Braunschweig, inv. 252; Werner Sumowski, Gemälde derRembrandt-Schüler, 6 vols. (Landau and Pfalz, 1983–94), 2: 1030–31, nos. 655, 656.
Sumowski rightly dismisses the traditional identification of the Braunschweig Shepherdess as
Saskia van Uylenburgh.

Provenance
Christian Gottlob Frege, Leipzig (1715–81), possibly by descent to his son Christian Gottlob
Frege (1747–1816), and to his son Christian Gottlob Frege (1778–1855).
Private collection, Paris, as of 1935, possibly André de Hevesy.
Paul Page, Moulins, France, by 1956, and thence by descent (sale, Sotheby’s, London, 10
July 2003, no. 19).[1]Steve Wynn Collection, Las Vegas.
From whom acquired by the present owner in 2008.

Provenance Notes

1. The catalogue for Hotel Druot’s sale on June 18, 1956 describes Son portrait par lui-méme at
74 x 61 cm (cat. no. 115), which sold for 20,000 francs. This could describe the transaction inwhich Paul Page acquired the present work.
© 2020 The Leiden CollectionSelf-Portrait with Shaded Eyes
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Exhibition History
Amsterdam, Museum Het Rembrandthuis, “Rembrandt’s Hidden Self-Portraits,” 31January–16 March 2003 [lent by a private collection, France].
Norfolk, Virginia, Chrysler Museum, on loan with the permanent collection, 22 June 2009–22
January 2010 [lent by the present owner].
Oxford, Ashmolean Museum, on loan with the permanent collection, January–December
2010, [lent by the present owner].
Tokyo, National Museum of Western Art, “Rembrandt: The Quest for Chiaroscuro,” 12March–12 June 2011; Nagoya, Nagoya City Art Museum, 25 June–4 September 2011, no. 13[lent by the present owner].
Raleigh, North Carolina Museum of Art, “Rembrandt in America,” 30 October 2011–22
January 2012; Cleveland, Cleveland Museum of Art, 19 February–28 May 2012; Minneapolis,
Minneapolis Institute of Arts, 24 June–16 September 2012, no. 17 [lent by the present owner].
Brooklyn, Brooklyn Museum of Art, on loan with the permanent collection, March
2013–December 2014 [lent by the present owner].
Detroit, Detroit Institute of Arts, on loan with the permanent collection, January 2015–January
2016 [lent by the present owner].
Paris, Museé du Louvre, “Masterpieces of The Leiden Collection: The Age of Rembrandt,” 22
February–22 May 2017 [lent by the present owner].
Beijing, National Museum of China, “Rembrandt and His Time: Masterpieces from The
Leiden Collection,” 17 June–3 September 2017 [lent by the present owner].
Shanghai, Long Museum, West Bund, “Rembrandt, Vermeer and Hals in the Dutch Golden
Age: Masterpieces from The Leiden Collection,” 23 September 2017–25 February 2018 [lentby the present owner].
Moscow, The Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, “The Age of Rembrandt and Vermeer:
Masterpieces of The Leiden Collection,” 28 March 2018–22 July 2018 [lent by the present
owner].
St. Petersburg, The State Hermitage Museum, “The Age of Rembrandt and Vermeer:
Masterpieces of The Leiden Collection,” 5 September 2018–13 January 2019 [lent by thepresent owner].
Abu Dhabi, Louvre Abu Dhabi, “Rembrandt, Vermeer and the Dutch Golden Age.
Masterpieces from The Leiden Collection and the Musée du Louvre,” 14 February–18 May
2019 [lent by the present owner].

© 2020 The Leiden CollectionSelf-Portrait with Shaded Eyes
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References
Von Moltke, Joachim Wolfgang. Govaert Flinck (1615–1660). Amsterdam, 1965, 246–47,
under no. 101 (as by Rembrandt and basis for copy attributed to Govaert Flinck).
Van de Wetering, Ernst. “Rembrandt’s Hidden Self-Portraits/Rembrandts verborgen
zelfportretten.” Kroniek van het Rembrandthuis (2002): 2–3, 8–25, nos. 1–2, 16–27.
Van de Wetering, Ernst, et al. A Corpus of Rembrandt Paintings. Vol. 4: SelfPortraits. Stichting Foundation Rembrandt Research Project. Dordrecht, 2005, 139–40, figs.
73–75, 207-214, fig. 197, fig. 199, Addendum IV 2, 615-26, figs. 1–12, figs. 15–16.
Schwartz, Gary. The Rembrandt Book. New York, 2006, 198, no. 336, 371.
Van de Wetering, Ernst. “The Various Functions of Rembrandt’s Self-Portraits.”
In Rembrandt: Three Faces of the Master. Edited by Benedict Leca, 61–63, nos. 25–26. Exh.
cat. Cincinnati, Cincinnati Art Museum. Cincinnati, 2008.
Hirschfelder,

Dagmar.

TronieundPorträt

inderniederländischen

Malereides17. Jahrhunderts. Berlin, 2008, 165–67, no. 423, no. 424.
Van de Wetering, Ernst. Rembrandt: A Life in 180 Paintings. Amsterdam, 2008, 212–13.
Kofuku, Akira, ed. Rembrandt: The Quest for Chiaroscuro. Exh. cat. Tokyo, National Museumof Western Art; Nagoya, Nagoya City Art Museum. Tokyo, 2011, 344–45, no. 13.
Van de Wetering, Ernst, et al. A Corpus of Rembrandt Paintings. Vol. 5: Small-Scale History
Paintings. Stichting Foundation Rembrandt Research Project. Dordrecht, 2011, 317–19, figs.
13–14.
Rassieur, Tom. “Rembrandt in the Seventeenth Century.” In Rembrandt in America:
Collecting and Connoisseurship. Edited by George S. Keyes, Tom Rassieur, and Dennis P.
Weller, 27, 43–44, pl. 7, 50. Exh. cat. Raleigh, North Carolina Museum of Art; Cleveland,
Cleveland Museum of Art; Minneapolis, Minneapolis Institute of Arts. New York, 2011.
Keyes, George S. “Rembrandt Paintings and America.” In Rembrandt in America: Collecting
and Connoisseurship. Edited by George S. Keyes, Tom Rassieur, and Dennis P. Weller, 60,
Exh. cat. Raleigh, North Carolina Museum of Art; Cleveland, Cleveland Museum of Art;
Minneapolis, Minneapolis Institute of Arts. New York, 2011.
Weller, Dennis P. “Rembrandt in the Seventeenth Century.” In Rembrandt in America:
Collecting and Connoisseurship. Edited by George S. Keyes, Tom Rassieur, and Dennis P.
Weller, 182, no. 17. Exh. cat. Raleigh, North Carolina Museum of Art; Cleveland, Cleveland
Museum of Art; Minneapolis, Minneapolis Institute of Arts. New York, 2011.
Surh, Dominique. “Self-Portrait with Shaded Eyes.” In Masterpieces of The Leiden Collection:
The Age of Rembrandt. Edited by Blaise Ducos and Dominique Surh, 38, no. 9. Exh. cat.
Paris, Musée du Louvre. Paris, 2017.
Yeager-Crasselt, Lara. “Rembrandt and His Time: China and the Dutch Republic in the© 2020 The Leiden CollectionSelf-Portrait with Shaded Eyes
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Golden Age.” In Rembrandt and His Time: Masterpieces from The Leiden Collection. Editedby Lara Yeager-Crasselt, 9; 13, no.11. Translated by Li Ying. Exh. cat. Beijing, National
Museum of China. Beijing, 2017
Yeager-Crasselt, Lara. “Self-Portrait with Shaded Eyes.” In

Rembrandt and His Time:

Masterpieces from The Leiden Collection. Edited by Lara Yeager-Crasselt, 42–43; 174, no.
11. Translated by Li Ying. Exh. cat. Beijing, National Museum of China. Beijing, 2017.
Wang, Jia. “Dutch Painting in Golden Age.” In Journal of National Museum of China 169, no.
8 (2017): 34.
Long Museum, West Bund. Rembrandt, Vermeer and Hals in the Dutch Golden Age:
Masterpieces from The Leiden Collection. Exh. cat. Shanghai, Long Museum, West Bund.
Shanghai, 2017, 62–63.
DeWitt, David. “Govert Flinck Learns to Paint Like Rembrandt.” In Ferdinand Bol and Govert
Flinck – Rembrandt’s Master Pupils. Edited by Norbert Middelkoop and David DeWitt, 27, fig.
16. Exh. cat. Amsterdam, Amsterdam Museum; Amsterdam, Museum Het Rembrandthuis.
Zwolle, 2017.
Yeager-Crasselt, Lara. “The Leiden Collection and the Dutch Golden Age.” In The Age of
Rembrandt and Vermeer: Masterpieces of The Leiden Collection. Edited by Polina
Lyubimova, 18, 21; 29, 32. Translated by Daria Babich and Daria Kuzina. Exh. cat. Moscow,
The Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts; St. Petersburg, The State Hermitage Museum.
Moscow, 2018.
Yeager-Crasselt, Lara “Self-Portrait with Shaded Eyes.” In The Age of Rembrandt andVermeer: Masterpieces of The Leiden Collection. Edited by Polina Lyubimova, 170–71; 242,
no. 52. Translated by Daria Babich and Daria Kuzina. Exh. cat. Moscow, The Pushkin State
Museum of Fine Arts; St. Petersburg, The State Hermitage Museum. Moscow, 2018.
Yeager-Crasselt, Lara. “The Leiden Collection and the Dutch Golden Age.” In Rembrandt,
Vermeer and the Dutch Golden Age. Masterpieces from The Leiden Collection and the
Musée du Louvre. Edited by Blaise Ducos and Lara Yeager-Crasselt, 25, 28. Exh. cat. Abu
Dhabi, Louvre Abu Dhabi. London, 2019. [Exhibition catalogue also published in French andArabic.]Blanc, Jan. “Being Modern, Being Dutch: The Seventeenth-Century Invention of the GoldenAge.” In Rembrandt, Vermeer and the Dutch Golden Age. Masterpieces from The Leiden
Collection and the Musée du Louvre. Exh. cat. Abu Dhabi, Louvre Abu Dhabi. Edited by
Blaise Ducos and Lara Yeager-Crasselt, 42. London, 2019. [Exhibition catalogue also
published in French and Arabic.]
Ducos, Blaise, and Lara Yeager-Crasselt, eds. Rembrandt, Vermeer and the Dutch Golden
Age. Masterpieces from The Leiden Collection and the Musée du Louvre. Exh. cat. Abu
Dhabi, Louvre Abu Dhabi. London, 2019, 86–7, no. 22. [Exhibition catalogue also published in
French and Arabic.]© 2020 The Leiden CollectionSelf-Portrait with Shaded Eyes
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Manuth, Volker, and Marieke de Winkel. Rembrandt. The Self-Portraits. Cologne, 2019, 90-1,
158, illustrated.
Manuth, Volker, Marieke de Winkel, and Rudie van Leeuwen. Rembrandt. The Complete
Paintings. Cologne, 2019, 188, 607, no. 154.
Sevcik, Anja K., ed. Inside Rembrandt 1606-1669. Exh. cat. Cologne, Wallraf-RichartzMuseum & Fondation Corboud. Petersberg, 2019, 232–35, no. 72.

Versions
Versions and Copies

1. Attributed to Govaert Flinck, copy of Self-Portrait with Shaded Eyes in unrestored (pre-1966)
state, oil on panel, 69 x 55 cm, present location unknown. Formerly with art dealer J. Boehlerin Munich in 1929; with art dealer A. G. Luzern in 1934; and with an unknown art dealer inBerlin in 1962.

Technical Summary
The support, a rectangular composite panel, comprises three vertically grained Eastern Baltic oak
planks, a wide central plank flanked by two identical width narrow planks. The planks derive fromat least two different trees felled after 1626, with a first use date of between 1626 and 1658. The
left vertical panel join runs through the left side of the black cap, the right join through thebackground to the figure’s right. Narrow wood shims have been secured to both vertical edges.
The panel has bevels along all four sides and is unthinned and uncradled. The panel reverse has
two identical red wax seals along the central plank but no paper labels, import stamps or obvious
panel maker’s mark.
A warm, light-colored ground has been thinly and evenly applied. The portrait has been painted ina feigned oval on the rectangular panel support. The paint along the four outer corners has been
applied thinly as a glaze with lively brushstrokes that allow the light-colored ground to show
through. The brushwork along the brown paint applied to the lower right quadrant of the oval
where the signature has been applied also allows the ground to show through. The remainder ofthe composition within the confines of the oval—the gray background, the face, and the dark
garments—has been applied in a paste consistency with low brushwork and low impasto. Undermagnification, the hairs that make up the left side of Rembrandt’s moustache appear to havebeen scratched into the wet paint.
In 2000 Martin Bijl restored the painting and removed major restorations that had been applied,© 2020 The Leiden CollectionPowered by TCPDF (www.tcpdf.org)

Self-Portrait with Shaded Eyes
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presumably by one of Rembrandt’s pupils, soon after it was executed, which had altered the halflength self-portrait of Rembrandt as a 28-year-old man into one resembling a Russian aristocrat
by adding earrings, a goatee, shoulder length hair, and a velvet cap. Bijl’s restoration revealed
the original portrait of Rembrandt with the round chin and gentle eyes common in other selfportraits.
No underdrawing or compositional changes are readily apparent in infrared images captured at
780–1000 nanometers.
The painting is signed and dated in dark paint along the lower right quadrant of the feigned oval.
The painting has not undergone conservation treatment since its acquisition in 2008 and remains
in a good state of preservation.
Further technical information about this artwork is available in The Rembrandt Database.

Technical Summary Endnotes

1. The characterization of the wood is based on Ian Tyers’s 2003 and 2011 dendrochronology
reports. The panel underwent dendrochronology by Peter Klein in 1995.
2. The narrow left and right planks are 13 cm wide.
3. With black tape applied to the panel reverse.

© 2020 The Leiden Collection