The Fifth Desk · Evaluation
Act I · The Map
Rembrandt van Rijn · an oil painting on canvas · the painter at three-quarter length, nearly frontal, in a white cap, palette, brushes and maulstick in one hand, before a pale wall marked with two arcs of circles · about 114 by 94 centimetres · Kenwood House, Hampstead, London, the Iveagh Bequest · painted in Amsterdam, about 1665 to 1669 · the single canvas, scored as it stands, nothing in it known to be lost or replaced
Mode
Self-portrait at three-quarter length; the maker with the tools of his trade, against a wall bearing geometric signs
Mythos
The aged maker facing out: the artificer at the end of the making, near-hieratic in pose, beside the circle as the painter’s sign
Phase
Late: painted in Amsterdam about 1665 to 1669, in the last years of the painter’s life
Presentation
Oil on canvas, about 114 by 94 centimetres, upright; one figure at about life size, cut at the thighs, frontal, at the standing viewer’s eye
Register
Grave grandeur: one height, sustained, in the lit face against the dark robe and the pale wall
Scale
One man, one face, one wall
Governing Proposition
An old painter stands square to the viewer at about life size, in a white cap and a dark robe, palette, brushes and maulstick in one hand and the other at his hip, against a pale wall on which two arcs of circles are drawn. The face is built up thick; the tools are left as a few open strokes; the circles are the only lines in the picture. The wager of the painting is that a self is made of the matter it works in, that the making can be shown exactly where convention required finish, and that a maker can stand as the measure of himself, without flattery and without pathos, beside a sign whose meaning he does not give.
Act II · The Essay
Movement I
Rembrandt van Rijn, born in 1606, painted himself across his working life, and the self-portraits of the 1630s and 1640s show a gentleman in costume, at half length, in borrowed finery. This canvas belongs to the last of them. It was painted in Amsterdam in the late 1660s, and is usually dated about 1665 to 1669, the last years before his death in 1669. It is oil on canvas, about 114 by 94 centimetres, upright, and it hangs at Kenwood House, Hampstead, in London, as part of the Iveagh Bequest, in the care of English Heritage. The work judged is this one canvas. The other late self-portraits, in London, The Hague and Cologne, are its context, and are not scored here.
The painter stands at three-quarter length, nearly frontal, cut at the thighs, at about life size, and looks straight out. He wears a white linen cap and a dark robe trimmed with fur over a red garment. In one hand, low at the side, he holds palette, brushes and maulstick, laid in summarily; the other hand is at his hip, barely stated. Behind him is a pale wall, and on it two large arcs of circles, each cut, by the figure or by the edge of the canvas. The face is built up thickly in the light. Much of the rest is thin and open.
The seventeenth century had made the self-portrait a portrait of the painter as a gentleman: in costume, at half length, set against darkness, a curtain or architecture, the tools of the trade concealed or carried as an attribute, the hand finished. Rembrandt’s own earlier self-portraits kept those terms. Here they are broken in three places at once: the tools are shown, and left unresolved; the ground is a bare wall carrying signs; and the figure stands square to the plane, with the standing of a state portrait. No patron is known for the canvas. The taste of Amsterdam in the 1660s had moved toward a smooth, bright finish, and the open handling of the late manner was read by some contemporaries as negligence. The cost of the departure was paid in standing and in the market.
Movement II
The face is the picture’s one fully built thing. It is laid in layered, worked impasto, the light modelled by the thickness of the paint as much as by its tone, so that the flesh catches real light on its ridges; the shadowed side is thin and warm. Nothing is idealised. The pouches under the eyes, the bulb of the nose and the slack skin of a man of about sixty are recorded as facts of paint. The face is a made thing and a living one at once, and the painting’s knowledge is there: a self is built of the matter it works in.
Above it the cap is a few broad, loaded strokes of white. It is the one white in the picture and its brightest mass, and it crowns the face as the light’s second source. With the frontal, near-symmetrical pose it gives the figure a hieratic standing, a crown or a halo that recalls older images of authority without quoting them. Below, the dark robe is the ground the face stands out of, and its breadth is the figure’s weight; the red beneath it is the one warm colour the robe lets through.
The painting’s elevation is here, and it is of one kind: a grave grandeur, the stillness of a man who looks back. It does not range. There is no transport by scale and no terror, and the wall and the lower half of the canvas are held down to serve the face, which rises on every return. What it discloses can be stated. An old man presents himself neither as a gentleman nor as a figure of pity, but upright, with the tools of his trade, as the measure of himself. Whether the face shows dignity, defiance or plain looking varies with whoever stands before it; what it gives is a presence more than a statement.
Movement III
Low at the side, in one hand, the painter holds palette, brushes and maulstick. They are a passage of rapid, unresolved marks that hold the place of hand and tools without describing them, and at a distance they still read correctly. They dissolve into the same open strokes as the ground, so that the hand and its instrument are one stuff. Without them this would be a portrait of an old man; with them it is a portrait of the painter. Their half-made state is the claim.
Convention demanded finish exactly here. The gentleman painter’s hand was finished, and his tools were hidden or carried as the emblems of a liberal art. Rembrandt shows the making where the making was meant to be concealed. It can be objected that the canvas is simply unfinished. The face, though, is fully built, and the rest is held at one consistent degree of openness, and late Rembrandt left such passages open in finished, signed works. The open hands read as a decision, not a lapse.
The other hand, at the hip, is so slight that it hardly registers, the one part of the picture that could yield. Painted smoothly, all of this would become a likeness, and the knowledge would go. The scale runs from the face, the paint at its most worked, through the tools, paint barely becoming object, to the wall and its drawn lines. Everything in the canvas is ranked by how far the paint has been brought toward resolution, and light, value and temperature are held in one key across thick and thin.
Movement IV
Behind the figure, on the pale wall, are two large arcs of circles, drawn with a sure, unruled line, each cut, by the figure or by the edge of the canvas. They are the only geometry in the picture and its only drawn lines, set against a body made of no lines at all. Without them the wall would be a void, and the figure would have nothing to stand against but darkness, as in most of the late self-portraits. The ground here is not a room, a curtain or a darkness, but a wall with signs on it, and such signs are without precedent in a portrait.
What they mean has been argued for more than a century and is not settled. They have been read as the perfect circle drawn freehand that Vasari tells of Giotto, a painter’s claim to mastery; as the two hemispheres of a world map hung on the wall; as an emblem of theory and practice, or of art and nature; as signs of perfection and of the cosmos; as the remains of exercises with the compass in a studio; and as a device of composition and nothing more. The painting carries no sign of which is meant. It leaves the circles mute, and the myth they might build is evoked, not constructed.
They do not lie on the picture like an inscription. They lie on the wall in the same air and light as the figure, with the same pale ground showing through, and the face is the same matter at its most worked. One law governs the most distant things in the canvas, paint as matter under one light. What tests it is the meaning: if the circles are emblems, they speak a different language from the face. Each return finds the relation of face to circles undecided, and the painting’s yield gathers in that one question.
Movement V
The canvas was out of public view for most of its life, in private hands. It came to Kenwood House, on Hampstead Heath, with the Iveagh Bequest, and there it hangs, in the care of English Heritage: in a house museum rather than a national gallery, looked at in a drawing room’s light, and lent to major exhibitions. It is the most often reproduced of the late self-portraits and the standard image of late Rembrandt, though Kenwood draws fewer visitors than the great national museums.
It survives whole, some 360 years after it was painted. Nothing of the image is known to be lost, overpainted by a later hand or replaced; the open passages are the painter’s. It is oil on canvas of its period, lined and varnished in the ordinary course of its life. Its surface is not fixed to its moment. Cap, robe and tools need no note for a viewer now, and the circles were as mute when they were painted as they are today.
The late self-portraits as a group shaped what self-portraiture became, through Reynolds, the Romantics and Van Gogh, and this canvas is the group’s most reproduced member; the redirection belongs to the series and to the late manner as a whole, and the circles have had no descendants. On this desk the canvas stands level with The Night Watch, at 8.5. The public commission of 1642, turned against its genre for the city’s hall, departs further and presses harder on its tradition; the self-portrait, a private canvas that survives whole, is the more necessary and the more coherent. The Night Watch holds a company and a city. This holds a self, an age, a craft and an art: one figure on one canvas, and the figure says so.
Act III · The Twelve
Subtract, part by part. The face cannot go: it is the picture’s one fully built thing, and its argument. The cap cannot go: it is the one white and the brightest mass, crowning the face as the light’s second source. The robe is the dark ground the face stands out of, and its breadth is the figure’s weight. The tools cannot go, though barely painted: without them this is an old man, with them it is the painter, and their half-made state is the claim. Without the circles the wall is a void. What yields is little: the hand at the hip hardly registers, and the red under the robe could be another colour.
Score: 8.6 / 10
What is disclosed can be stated: the maker as the measure of himself, without flattery and without pathos. The painter presents himself neither as a gentleman in borrowed finery, as his self-portraits of the 1630s and 1640s did, nor as a figure of pity, but upright and frontal, the tools of his trade in hand. The face is not idealised: the pouches, the bulb of the nose and the slack skin are recorded as facts of paint. A life can be stood behind; the self is the work and its making; age does not reduce the claim. Held below the top because the circles’ meaning, which would carry the disclosure further, is not legible, and the face gives a presence more than a statement.
Score: 8.6 / 10
Elevation is real and of one kind, a grave grandeur: the frontal figure filling the canvas, the white cap and the lit face against the dark robe and the pale wall, the stillness of a man who looks back. It recurs in the face, which rises on every return, and in the confrontation of the living face with the two drawn lines. It does not range. There is no transport by scale, no terror and no second register; the wall is quiet, and the lower half of the canvas is dark and open. The frequency is low by design: one height, sustained, and the rest held down to serve it.
Score: 8.4 / 10
The particular is very particular: one man, one cap, one face of about sixty. It becomes archetype in part. The old maker facing out with the tools of his craft is the artificer at the end of the making, and the frontal, near-symmetrical pose under a cap like a halo gives the figure a hieratic standing that recalls older images of authority without quoting them. The circles are where a myth would be built: Giotto’s freehand circle as Vasari tells it, the two hemispheres of a world map, theory and practice, perfection. The literature offers each; the painting makes none load-bearing. The myth is evoked by sign and pose, not constructed.
Score: 7.9 / 10
The inheritance is the seventeenth-century self-portrait, Rembrandt’s own included: the painter as gentleman, in costume, at half length, against a dark or architectural ground, the tools concealed or kept as attribute, the hand finished. The departure is threefold and on the canvas. The tools are shown and left unresolved, so the making shows exactly where convention demanded finish. The ground is a bare wall carrying two geometric figures without precedent in a portrait. The figure stands frontal, square to the plane, with the standing of a state portrait. The stake was real, but it was paid in standing and in the market, not in a refused commission: no patron for the canvas is known.
Score: 8.6 / 10
Substitute another form and much goes. Painted smoothly, the face would become a likeness, and the painting’s knowledge, that a self is built of the matter it works in, would be lost: the flesh is laid in thick, worked paint, so the face is a made thing and a living one at once. The tools dissolve into the same open strokes as the ground, hand and instrument one stuff. The circles are drawn lines, the only lines in the picture, set against a body made of none. A figure at about life size, frontal, at the standing viewer’s eye, makes the encounter a meeting. As a print the impasto would flatten, and the argument with it.
Score: 8.8 / 10
Evidence over promise. The circles have been argued over for more than a century without settlement: Giotto’s circle, the hemispheres of a world map hung on the wall, an emblem of theory and practice or of art and nature, signs of perfection, the remains of exercises with the compass in a studio, a device of composition. The face carries a literature of its own, read as stoic, as defiant, as plain looking, and as the summit of the self-portraits. Each return finds the relation of face to circles undecided. Held below the top because the yield gathers in one question rather than many, and the series as a whole has drawn more argument than this one canvas.
Score: 8.7 / 10
Intrinsic force and achieved reach are scored together. The force is a real reorganisation of what a self-portrait may be: the painter’s own making shown unfinished at the site of finish, and a sign without a figure set beside a face as its equal. The reach was delayed and is diffuse. The canvas was out of public view for most of its life, now hangs in a house museum rather than a national gallery, and the circles have no line of descendants. Achieved reach is scored with intrinsic force: the late self-portraits as a group shaped what self-portraiture became, through Reynolds, the Romantics and Van Gogh, and this canvas is the group’s most reproduced member, but the redirection belongs to the series.
Score: 8.2 / 10
Weighed on form, then presence, then fabric. Form: whole. Nothing of the image is known to be lost, overpainted by a later hand or replaced, and the open passages are open by the painter’s choice, not by damage. Presence: about 360 years, long in private hands, now on public view at Kenwood with loans to major exhibitions, and the standard image of late Rembrandt. It is not the widest presence: Kenwood draws fewer than the great national museums. Fabric: oil on canvas of the period, lined and varnished in the ordinary course. The surface is not fixed to its moment; cap, robe and tools need no note, and the circles were as mute when painted as now.
Score: 9.2 / 10
Judged as command of oil on canvas, and the making is load-bearing, in places the subject. The face is constructed in layered, worked impasto, the light modelled by thickness as much as by tone, so that the flesh catches real light on its ridges; the shadowed side is thin and warm. The cap is a few broad, loaded strokes. The tools are a passage of rapid, unresolved marks that hold the place of hand, palette and brushes without describing them, and still read correctly at a distance. The circles are drawn with a sure, unruled line. Light, value and temperature are held in one key across thick and thin, from built flesh to bare ground to drawn line.
Score: 9.4 / 10
Take the two most distant elements: the bare geometric circle on the wall and the thick, living flesh of the face. They obey one law, paint as matter under one light. The circles are not laid on top of the picture; they lie on the wall in the same air as the figure, with the same pale ground showing through, and the face is the same matter at its most worked. The tools mediate, paint barely becoming object. Everything is ranked by how far the paint has been brought toward resolution, and the scale runs unbroken from line to face. What tests the law is the circles’ meaning: if they are emblems, they speak another language from the face.
Score: 8.9 / 10
The orders held are few, and they are integrated: the person and consciousness, a self looking at itself; age and mortality, in a face of about sixty; labour and craft, in the tools in hand and a painting that shows its making; art as an order of knowledge, in the circles, whatever they are; perhaps the world, if the circles are hemispheres, but only perhaps. What holds the axis lowest of the twelve is what is absent: the family, the state, history, the natural order, any second person, and the sacred except as an echo in the hieratic pose. The form is one figure on one canvas, and the figure says so: a small form held to its own ceiling.
Score: 6.6 / 10
Act IV · The Reckoning
8.5 / 10 · Final Average
Placement: Tier IV · Canonical
Strongest Dimensions
The Made at 9.4, The Imperishable at 9.2, The Inner Law at 8.9 and The Living Form at 8.8. A command of oil that builds a face in impasto, leaves the tools as open strokes and draws two circles freehand, all in one key; a canvas that survives whole after some 360 years; one law, paint as matter under one light, ranking everything from drawn line to living face; and a form in which the handling is the argument that a self is made of its matter.
Limiting Dimension
The Encompassed at 6.6: a self, an age, a craft and an art held together, and no family, no state, no history and no natural order. Below the rest, The Archetypal Deep at 7.9 and Pressure on Tradition at 8.2: the archetype of the maker is evoked by the pose and by circles the painting leaves mute, and the reach of the late manner belongs to the series of self-portraits more than to this one canvas, which spent most of its life out of view. Those two hold the work at the Epochal Gate; The Encompassed holds its aggregate at 8.5.
The Necessity Cap clears at 8.6 against a threshold of 7.5. The Coherence Floor clears with room: The Living Form at 8.8, The Made at 9.4, The Inner Law at 8.9, each against 7.0. The Epochal Gate is unmet: The Imperishable at 9.2, The Unconcealment at 8.6 and The Swerve at 8.6 clear the bar of 8.5, but Pressure on Tradition at 8.2 and The Archetypal Deep at 7.9 fall short. The Universal Minimum is met (no axis but The Encompassed falls below 7.9, against 7.5) and The Encompassed, which is exempted, clears its own floor of 6.0 at 6.6. The twelve sum to 101.9, an average of 8.49 that displays 8.5.
Basis · a reading from knowledge of Self-Portrait with Two Circles, oil on canvas, about 114 by 94 centimetres, painted by Rembrandt in Amsterdam about 1665 to 1669 and held at Kenwood House, Hampstead, London, in the Iveagh Bequest, in the care of English Heritage; not from standing before it, and no image or written source was consulted. The work scored is the single canvas as it stands now: nothing in it is known to be lost, overpainted or replaced, and nothing stands in place of an original. The other late self-portraits, in London, The Hague and Cologne, are context and are not scored. The readings of the circles are given as readings, none settled. No inscription is quoted, and no words of the painter’s. Facts that could not be verified are not given, among them the year the canvas was bought for the collection and the year of the bequest, whether it is signed or dated, what technical examination shows of an earlier pose, its exhibition history, its earlier provenance, its exact dimensions and condition, the painter’s finances in the 1650s and 1660s, the critic who later codified the taste against him, and the later painters who are said to have named it.