9. Rembrandt’s Prediction.

(Igor Ganikowskij, part from the text "Hope and wait"(www.ganikowskij.com)

Perhaps one of the oldest self-portraits of Rembrandt dating to 1669 can be found in the Walraff-Richartz Museum in Cologne. For me, this work of small dimension is one of his most prophetic. Of course, it is not enough to be an outstanding master to create such a work. You have to live a life commensurate with it. Rembrandt’s life was typically human, the kind of life that everyone lives, but its landscape was distinguished with an unusual relief. There were snow-capped peaks and the deepest falls. In the first part of his life, the highlight of which was his famous1638 portrait of Saskia on her knees, he was showered with earthly gifts – loud fame, love, money, respect… Of course, he deserved this, or this was part of the plan. But then later, fate, as it often happens, began to take away of all of his earthly acquisitions one after the other. His children died, barely having been born, one after the other. He lost his wife whom he loved so dearly. As soon as he started to do things in his paintings that did not correspond to the convictions of his contemporaries, he suddenly was devoid of orders, and later, money, his wonderful rich home, his serious collection of paintings. Then his second wife died and the beloved, only remaining son of Saskia, Titus. And after all of this, almost complete oblivion and humiliation… Then finally, the last self-portrait, the bent, toothless old man with the strange smile on his face, a smile which it is simply impossible to describe. Such a smile is one, probably, worn by people who have suffered much, wandered much, and who had at the last achieved, despite it all, their highest point or peak, a peak at which something opened to them and became understood, something that was formerly out of reach. It is completely possible that every person reaches their own peak, when the scales fall from their eyes. All the earthly, like a shell, slips off from them, and they transform into light, as in this painting.

But in this self-portrait there is something unusual even for Rembrandt. In front of him there is some kind of figure, something resembling a man, but more reminiscent of a mannequin, or as we would now say, or of a robot or a cyborg. Moreover, Rembrandt’s tormented smile is clearly  meant for him, since he is poking the mannequin with his maulstick. It turns out that a man, tormented and exhausted by his road, spent his last strength conquering his peak, and what is it that he met there? A mannequin that was completely devoid of any emotions. If in the painting from the Saint Petersburg Hermitage collection “Return of the Prodigal Son,” painted a little earlier than the Cologne self-portrait, the all-forgiving father places his hand on his prodigal son’s back, embraces and pulls him to himself, and this scene is incredibly emotional, then in the Cologne painting, a most important meeting is also iterated, but a completely different one… a meeting with blind fate or with the “mechanical, digital” image of himself, maybe a meeting with the “lithographic plate,” with which he was printed off, with the being who would inherit from him?