Rembrandt
Rembrandt was the first artist in himself to introduce self-portraits. He uniquely self-examines himself as a painter detached from the portrait. Additionally, his paintings are animated, detailed, and have a personal connection to him. He achieves this by using the psychology of light- using light and shade to draw the viewers’ attention to his paintings. In his art in Kenwood’s house, Rembrandt uses light, which suffuses his face and leaves his lower body part in shadow. Therefore, controlling the use of light which contributes to focus. He suppresses the lower body part by using shadow and uses soft light to create a focus on his face. He uses shade to engage the viewer and add a tone of mystery leading the viewer to look at his face and eyes to unravel the mystery.
To him, his countenance is a roadmap of his experiences, which he communicates through stylistic and emotional changes. His portraits are an autobiography of himself from his early twenties until the age of sixty-three. His gaze depicted reflection and displayed his current emotional state. In his pictures, he also captures the transition from his youth to his advanced age. He starts off showing laughter and anger and wearing youthful attires and shifts to an enigmatic, reflective, composed, and resolute individual. He also used fabrics in his paints which had different effects on the light to intrigue his audience.
Rembrandt captures his different stages by using different paintbrushes on his face to create detail. For instance, the Kenwood painting, when scrutinized, captures the wrinkles around his mouth and his eyes. His right cheek, as he high lights with his paintbrush, is also scared, which may be attributed to disease.
Rembrandt may have created his portraits for sale. He was innovative by incorporating the art of graphics through his etchings. In comparison to the ancient engravings, etching produced more versatile paintings than engravings for its soft medium compared to the resistant wood and metal used in engravings. In this way, he made huge sales by merely reworking on his models.
With portraits such as the Christ with the sick child, he uses both light and shadow to convey Jesus’ humility. He also combined both etchings and engravings to relate his story to the audience through the settings created. He uses deep shadow for the figures at the right and incorporates exquisite light on the figures on the left, which exudes from his radiance to allude to his dignity and radiance.
In contrast, modern selfies are inauthentic and impersonal. It is as if the photographer is oblivious to the surroundings and focuses on himself or herself. The oblivion is because the modern selfies are taken in the spur of the moment. Little thought is given to what the photographer wants to convey to the viewers. I think that modern selfies are also deprived of genuine facial expressions with the advent of photoshops and video edits. While the editions may be used positively in the psychology of light, they are often used to change the actual facial features. The main contrast between Rembrandt’s self-portraits and today’s selfies is that Rembrandt was authentic in his emotional state, deliberate, and often captured the pictures when lone. Lastly, today’s selfies are often taken without the thought of preservation for the next generation. In Rembrandt’s case, he emulated Durer, Titan, and Raphael and created his portrait as the preservation of himself.