Enlightenment · Europe · Culture

1660

Rembrandt's Last Self-Portrait Period

1660

Bankrupt and outliving both his wife and his favorite son, Rembrandt van Rijn continued to paint a long series of unforgiving self-portraits: aging face, worn velvet, eyes full of the accumulation of looking. They are still the most searching autobiographical paintings in the Western tradition, proof that a brush in the hands of a master can tell the truth about a human face.