KEITH CHRSTIANSEN: Rembrandt stands apart from all other artists for the numerous self-portraits he produced: works that show an intense and a persistent self-examination. He painted this one in 1660, when he was fifty-four years old. By that time, he had lost his wife, a child, and he had been forced to declare bankruptcy. Walter Liedtke.

WALTER LIEDTKE: There's this slight lack of focus, this disparity between the two eyes which gives the one eye a kind of distracted, or you might say anxious look to it. There is more paint invested in the face than anywhere else, and he's really suggesting, wonderfully, textures and modeling. And you can see on the surface these highlights that sit like blobs of paint on the tip of the nose and other slashes. For example, around the eyes there are these almost carvings with paint to create shadows, and the dents in the cheek and so on. The textures of the face and the softness of the flesh: It strikes you as a very honest thing.

KEITH CHRSTIANSEN: Remarkably, there was a large market for these self-portraits—something that says a lot about his stature as an artist.

WALTER LIEDTKE: I think those late ones, especially, probably answered a large demand on the part of collectors. We have at the courts of Europe at this time collections of famous people—princes and writers and philosophers and artists, as well. So there was a market for famous men. And the most collectible thing you could have, if you were interested in Rembrandt, would be a mature self-portrait. Nonetheless, he's looking in a mirror for weeks, and he knows he's aging, and as an artist he could easily change his expression. I think the thoughtfulness and the directness that we see in this image is very much what patrons wanted out of Rembrandt.