Most painters, whatever style they eventually adopt, generally start their career by setting their own likeness down on canvas. It is a kind of baptism by fire attempted once and usually abandoned. This we know because there are far fewer portraits of artists in middle or old age than in their youth. For while the self is best known to self, capturing its essence in one image so that it transcends physical appearance is a mighty difficult affair. The eyes may be mirrors of the soul, but in realistic portraits there are too many temptations to gild the lily and enhance both them and the other bits.
Rembrandt was unusual in this regard. Through his lifetime he recorded the ravages of time, physical decay and fortune in over 70 self-portraits, starting from his youth in Leiden in the late 1620s to the year of his death at the age of 63 in Amsterdam in 1669.
More than any other painter (barring Picasso, Dali and Warhol), his name summons up a precise image of his physical appearance in people's minds. Besides these genuine self-portraits, there are others by his students, over whose attribution controversy has raged for years -- did Rembrandt paint them himself or were they the work of others?