Self-Portrait (Rembrandt, 1665)

The old painter stands holding his brushes, palette, and mahlstick, his working clothes and lined face caught in warm light, while behind him two large, mysterious arcs are drawn on the wall - their meaning still debated. Rembrandt confronts his own age and craft without flattery, the brushwork as rough and alive as the skin it describes. Now at Kenwood House in London, it is among the most searching of his late self-portraits, an artist near the end of his life facing himself plainly, tools in hand, still at work.