Signed with the artist's monogram and dated in the plate upper left (extremely faint).

A fine, richly printed 17th century/lifetime impression of Bartsch and Usticke's only state, showing touches of burr on the angel at the left, the platter, tablecloth, etc., the left and right plate edges inky.

Trimmed slightly within the platemark at the top and down to the plate mark elsewhere, otherwise in excellent condition. Collections in which impressions of this etching can be found: Rijkspretenkabinet,Rijksmuseum,Amsterdam; Kupferstichkabinett der Staatlichen Museen, Berlin-Dahlem; Fitzwilliam Musuem, Cambridge; Stadlesches Kunsinstitut, Frankfurt-on-Main; Ermitage Museum, Leningrad; The British Museum, London; Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris; Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna. Portraits occupy an important place in Rembrandt's oeuvre. Even in his Leiden days he was already making studies of old men and women, for which his own parents would doubtless have posed. The prints were probably not intended to be substantive works of art, but were rather Rembrandt's way of practicing ways of depicting a range of facial expressions. Between 1633 and 1664 Rembrandt made about twenty portrait etchings. Most of them were not executed for commercial publication as prints or book illustrations, but were private prints made for personal reasons. This etching was probably made from life or from one of the drawings in red chalk that Rembrandt made of old bearded men between 1630 and 1633. Italy produced a number of admirers of Rembrandt's etchings. Already by the mid 1630's, Giovanni Battista Castiglione, who was active in Genoa, where he would have known Cornelis de Wael and his collection of Rembrandt etchings, was influenced by Rembrandt. On the back of a trial proof of one of his etchings, Casttiglione, picking out the kind of fanciful head which was to his taste, made a pen and ink copy of 'Bearded Man, in a Furred Oriental Cap and Robe' and 'The Second Oriental Head' (Bartsch 287).

Bartsch 263 iv/iv; Hind 53; Biorklund-Barnard 31-I; Usticke 262 iii/iv

<< previous    [ return to Rembrandt index ]    next >>