Head of a Young Man or Self Portrait, 1629

Dutch Baroque master Rembrandt (1606 – 1669), is one of the greatest and most influential painters in the history of Western art. His masterful and compassionate depictions of complex emotions summarized his own anguished life. His ingenious conveyance of the subtleties of gesture, expression, light and shadow, made him famous when he was only in his early 20s. Privately, he was tormented by tragic deaths and financial hardships. He surmounted these burdens with an insightful sensitivity and technical brilliance which has made his work eternally enduring, and which made the emotional outpourings in his painting profoundly and universally significant.