Self-Portrait Etching at a Window
Medium
Etching, drypoint and burin in black on ivory laid paper
Dimensions
Image/plate: 15.6 × 13 cm (6 3/16 × 5 1/8 in.); Sheet: 16.5 × 13.6 cm (6 1/2 × 5 3/8 in.)
Classification
etching
Department
Prints and Drawings
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
181616
Rights
Public Domain
About this artwork
No artist has probed the potential of self-portraiture with greater tenacity and variety than Rembrandt. Over the course of his long career, he made over 80 self-portraits in oil, in chalk, in pen and ink and wash, and in etching. A large portion of these self-examinations were created while he was a young man, and served to spread his fame, his name and image, while advertising his abilities in portraiture and dramatic expression. But perhaps Rembrandt's most soul-searching and moving images da...
About the Artist
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...