’self-portrait’

Abstract

In his 1995 catalogue of Dutch paintings in the National Gallery of Art in Washington, Wheelock no longer accepts the present painting as a work by Rembrandt.¹ Gerson was the first to reject it, considering it to be an 18th- or 19th-century imitation.² In this entry we will argue — in line with Wheelock — that the painting, though not by Rembrandt, undoubtedly originated in the 17th century and most likely in Rembrandt’s studio. Technical and stylistic evidence suggests that it could be painted by the same hand as two portraits in historicising costume formerly also attributed to Rembrandt. When taken together with other characteristics of this unusual painting, the strange discrepancy between the execution of the underlying image and the painting’s final execution raises the question of Rembrandt’s possible involvement in its conception (see Chapter III pp. 261–263).