1626 -1669 · status, character and self-examination

Rembrandt makes the portrait an event: the model turns, waits, ages or supports the gaze, while light and matter reveal a social position without exhausting it.

Rembrandt painted sponsors, relatives, colleagues and his own face for over forty years. Not all of his portraits are certain biographies: lost names, old attributions and descriptive titles require careful reading. Gérard de Lairesse, painter and theorist, appears with a complex presence that tradition has sometimes read through his illness. Margaretha de Geer is linked to the merchant elite; the sobriety of the costume and the facial precision is authoritative without ostentation. An old woman sitting with her hands clasped transforms age into a structure of gestures, folds and light. In the Self-Portrait with Two Circles, Rembrandt shows himself at work in front of two enigmatic arcs: palette, clothing and unfinished surface affirm the status of the painter through the very act of painting. The "Portraits of Rembrandt" selection notably compares Portrait of Gérard de Lairesse and Portrait of Margaretha de Geer. His reading favors composition.

In Rembrandt, portraiture succeeds when a social rank remains visible but a person seems to continue to live beyond that rank.