such studies in the light of serious portraiture:
"It had never occurred to the young artist," he says, "to make a
dignified portrait of himself at the time when he painted these
pictures." The execution is clumsy, the color is dull and heavy and of
the brownish tone common to Rembrandt's early painting, and much of the
drawing--as in the rings of hair escaping to the surface from the thick
curling mass--is meaningless and indefinite, but the distribution of
light and shade is not unlike that of Rembrandt's later work and the
touch has a certain bold freedom that seems to have been his from the
first whenever he served as his own model, even while his handling was
still hard and prim in his portraits of others. Another work ascribed
to his early period, about 1634, is the "Man with a Helmet," also
commonly known as a self-portrait, fluent in execution and vivacious and
lifelike in expression, yet not without that hint of conscious pose
common with the artist in his endeavors to force the note of character.
The blunt, strong features are strikingly like those of the
authenticated portraits of the artist, but Dr. Karl Voll, Director of
the Alt Pinakothek at Munich, declares that the idea of a
"self-portrait," attractive as it is, can hardly in this case be upheld.
Whoever the sitter may have been, the painting is an amazing example of
dexterity of hand and acute observation. The sharp glitter of the
helmet, the contrasting flesh-like quality of the painting in the face,
the light vigorous drawing of the moustache and hair, give an impression
of the artist's mastery of his craft hardly to be surpassed at any
period of his life. Far less poetic in its color-scheme and
chiaro-oscuro than the youthful portrait belonging to Mrs. Gardiner's
collection, it is even more eloquent of the ease with which he managed
his tools. Of a still greater charm, with subtler problems met and
solved, is the portrait of Saskia van Ulenburgh, whom he married in
Amsterdam in the year 1634, the probable date of the Cassel portrait. At
all events the young woman carries in her hand a spray of rosemary, the
symbol of betrothal, and her dress has the richness of a Dutch bride's
equipment. Here we see Rembrandt's art in perhaps its most delicate and
psychologically interesting phase. The character revealed by the small
pretty features has neither extraordinary force nor marked
individuality. The lines are neither deep-cut nor broad. One is reminded
of