Self-Portrait (Rembrandt, 1658)

The aging Rembrandt sits facing us full on, monumental in a gold-toned robe, a staff or mahlstick held across his lap like a scepter, his lined face calm and commanding. He painted this in 1658, the very year bankruptcy stripped him of his house and goods, yet the figure radiates undimmed authority and self-possession. Now in the Frick, it is among the grandest of his many self-portraits - a man who had lost nearly everything material asserting, in paint, the one thing left to him: his unflinching gaze and his mastery.