Portrait of Rembrandt as St. Paul
Classification
Prints
Department
Drawings and Prints
Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Credit
Bequest of Julia H. Manges, in memory of her husband, Dr. Morris Manges, 1960
Accession Number
60.598.79
Tags
About this artwork
This print depicts Rembrandt van Rijn as the Apostle Paul, a subject the artist explored multiple times in his later career. The composition shows the apostle with his traditional attributes: a sword and manuscript. Rembrandt's self-portrayal as biblical figures represents a genre known as self-portrait historié, where artists assumed the guise of renowned historical or religious figures, particularly popular in the 1660s Dutch Golden Age. The print demonstrates Rembrandt's mastery of the mediu...
About the Artist
Rembrandt (Rembrandt van Rijn) · 1606–1669
Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn (1606–1669) stands as one of the greatest visual artists in the history of Western art and the most important Dutch painter of the 17th century. Born in Leiden to a prosperous miller's family, Rembrandt transformed painting through his revolutionary use of light and shadow, his psychological depth in portraiture, and his elevation of etching to a fine art. His approx...