Cleveland Museum of Art

Self-Portrait Drawing at a Window

Rembrandt van Rijn

Date

1648

Medium

etching, drypoint, and engraving

Culture

Netherlands

Department

Prints

Institution

Cleveland Museum of Art

In this late self-portrait—one of more than 80 created by Rembrandt van Rijn—the artist shows himself informally posed at a studio window. He uses a needle to draw into a copper etching plate and gazes directly at the viewer as if interrupted in the process of creating a work of art. The window provides the light required to complete this task, but it also reveals the isolation of art making by juxtaposing Rembrandt’s interior space with the expansive landscape and external world from which he has sequestered himself. In order to show himself with the direct gaze that characterizes this self-portrait, Rembrandt translated a view seen while studying himself in a mirror.

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