Self Portrait with Saskia

Perhaps more than any other artist of his time, Rembrandt van Rijn is known for his repeated exploration into self-portraiture. The artist looked to himself as a subject at every stage of his life, and taken together his self-portraits form a thorough visual autobiography. Rembrandt experimented with many formal devices in these works-sometimes posing with costumes and props-while at other times presenting himself candidly and without idealization. In Rembrandt and Saskia, the artist directly confronts the viewer (or perhaps his own reflection), the tools of his trade in hand, while his young wife looks on in the background.