Few artists depicted themselves as regularly as Rembrandt. Possibly unique in European art, he painted himself at least forty times, and etched no fewer than 31 self-portraits in a printmaking career that stretched over four decades. In 1639, aged 34, Rembrandt created the largest – and grandest - of his self-portraits in print, Self-Portrait leaning on a Stone Sill. It is offered here in a very good example of the second state. Only 17 impressions of the first state are known, and although several of these show pen and ink additions by the artist, he in the end made only a tiny correction to the band of the beret in the second state and the two states must have been made in quick succession.
Sumptuously dressed in 16th-century fashion and with the luxurious folds of his sleeve draped over the wall in the foreground, his pose emulates both Titian’s Portrait of Gerolamo (?) Barbarigo of circa 1510 (National Gallery, London, inv. no. NG 1944) and Raphael’s Portrait of Baldassare Castiglione, 1515 (Musée du Louvre, Paris, inv. no. 611). Rembrandt knew both paintings, and had made a drawing after Raphael’s portrait in the same year, when it was sold as part of the estate of Lucas van Uffelen. It was then bought by the diplomat Alfonso Lopez, and remained in Amsterdam, together with the portrait by Titian, which Lopez also owned. By associating himself with two of the greatest painters of the Italian Renaissance, he not only placed himself in their tradition, he also presented himself as the young, fashionable artist of the day. In the same year he made this flamboyant self-portrait, 1639, he bought the large house on Sint Antoniesbreestraat (today's Rembrandthuis) right next to Hendrick van Uylenburgh’s house, where his career in Amsterdam had begun. Within a few years’ time, his fortunes were to change: Saskia would die of tuberculosis, his painting style would fall out of favour with the wealthiest patrons, his own pupils secured the contracts he failed to receive, and the repayments for the house became unaffordable. But now he was at the height of his success and received commissions from the rich burghers of Amsterdam and the court in The Hague. He was the most celebrated artist in the Netherlands, and the future looked bright.
It is interesting to note that, even in a portrait as staged and calculated as the Self-Portrait leaning on a Stone Sill Rembrandt allowed – perhaps cherished – an element of spontaneity or accident: he did not, when working on the second state of the plate, remove the pentimenti on the outline of the cap, nor did he make any attempt to further elaborate or remove the undefined scribbles in the lower right of the image.