Column
A Thousand Words
Rembrandt van Rijn's Self-Portrait as the Apostle Paul
For a prolific but not always moneyed artist like Rembrandt, it was natural to turn to the self-portrait as a means of expression: his model was always close at hand and could be summoned into service as long as the painter could afford a mirror. The most self-conscious of artists, Rembrandt painted himself many times—as a boy mugging at the mirror, as a successful young bravo, as a melancholic middle-aged man, and as a dotard. But to portray himself as an apostle? Surely this one is worthy of a little further investigation.
In the seventeenth century, a portrait subject was often painted in the guise of some historical figure, either by his own request or at the suggestion of the artist. Art historians call these portraits historiés, or "historiated" portraits, "history" being understood to include not only all secular and ancient historical subjects, but also biblical and mythological ones. Usually, such paintings depicted the subject with the traditional attributes of the historical character portrayed and showed him at a key moment in his drama. The portrait was presumed to give a true (if flattering) likeness of the sitter and to imply that his virtues paralleled those of the historical figure—a moral likeness, if you will (and possibly flattering in this respect, too). For example, Rembrandt had already painted the Catholic poet Joost van den Vondel as St. Paul in 1659.
The Portrayal of St. Paul
By this point in his long career, Rembrandt had shifted his manner of painting from the operatic, Baroque -stagings of his early years to a focus on the single figure as a psychological portrait of the interior state of the character he portrayed. The Self-Portrait as the Apostle Paul (1661), for example, was intended to be one of a series of apostles and Evangelists. In each, the saint held his traditional attributes, but moreover expressed his character and mood as it is made known to us from Scripture.
We recognize St. Paul here by his costume, by the sheaf of Hebrew Scripture he holds, and by the sword hilt protruding from his coat. The turban and the loose coat of Oriental design were based on Turkish clothing of the time: in Rembrandt's day, the Turks were thought to have maintained the costume and customs of biblical times, and artists used their exotic clothing to signal biblical subjects. The sword and the Hebrew writings narrow our identification to St. Paul: the sword was both the instrument of his martyrdom and the "sword of the spirit," the word of God.
Paul stressed that only in the light of Christ can we understand the meaning of the Hebrew Old Testament. The dramatic fall of light from above, across his head, and onto the Hebrew text almost becomes a character in the drama, too: it is the divine light, which reveals the mystery of salvation to us through St. Paul's epistles. Light is a frequent metaphor in those writings—and so too is the mirror, which Rembrandt must have used to make his own likeness.
A recent cleaning has revealed the plaster wall behind Paul's shoulder, emerging from layers of dirt and yellowed varnish to suggest that Paul is in prison. The sword of his martyrdom is displayed prominently, too. Usually it is propped up in the background, or held point downward in repose, but here the saint wears it at the ready, as if to suggest his own militant zeal, the many military metaphors in his epistles, and his readiness to face death.
The expression on Paul's face is hard to read. Imprisonment and impending death would account for the deep melancholy, but at the same time he gazes outward with a resolute, if quizzical, expression, perhaps as if to give courage to his disciples. For in spite of disappointment, dissension, tribulation, the sufferings of a long life, and the certainty of death, it must be remembered that Paul never lost sight of the joy of the Christian message.
The Self-Portrayal
Thus Rembrandt's understanding and portrayal of St. Paul. But this is also a self-portrait; what of Rembrandt's understanding of himself? Why choose himself as the model for St. Paul? It is uncharacteristic in Western art to portray Paul as beardless, and these features are unmistakably Rembrandt's own. He may have felt a personal identification with the apostle. Though unchurched, Rembrandt regarded himself as a Protestant and was well aware of Paul's importance to the Reformation. Rembrandt was also a serious scholar of Scripture, and he saw himself as an interpreter, from the written word into vivid visual imagery.
Mary Elizabeth Podles is the retired curator of Renaissance and Baroque art at the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, Maryland. She is the author of A Thousand Words: Reflections on Art and Christianity (St. James Press, 2023). She and her husband Leon, a Touchstone senior editor, have six children and live in Baltimore, Maryland. She is a contributing editor for Touchstone.
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