It doesn't look like the face of a man who paints religious scenes. Fleshy, with that famously crumpled nose, he sports a jaunty hat and a look of shabby dandyism. In his later years -- more than two decades after he engraved this 1631 self-portrait -- the artist would be forced into bankruptcy, unable to fund his lavish lifestyle despite making good money as a painter, teacher and art dealer.
Appearances can be deceptive.
Rembrandt van Rijn, born July 15, 1606, in the city of Leiden in the Netherlands, lived and died by his Bible. Counter to the then- prevailing artistic trends -- still lifes, portraits and genre scenes a la Jan Vermeer were all the rage -- more than a third of Rembrandt's output depicted religious subjects. Most of these works were uncommissioned, painted purely because of the artist's love of the subject matter.