Rembrandt Anamorphosis of Self Portrait?
Not to long ago I visited the Art Institute of Chicago for the second time. This museum has one of the finest art collections in the United States and amongst their possessions is a rather amazing Rembrandt. Not that other Rembrandts aren't amazing of course. The first time I saw the painting I was mostly stunned and only slightly awed. Luckily there is a comfortable bench directly in front of it and I must have sat there for at least an hour staring at the painting. As I walked out of the hall of old masters and walked down towards the exit I had a c
reepy feeling something wasn't quite right with the painting. A few weeks ago on my second visit I decided to try and see if I could find what wasn't matching up in my mind. As a reference I've included a shot of the painting in question to the right. Click the image for a detailed version.
There is absolutely nothing odd about the colours, composition, texture, anything. It's a typical run of the mill perfect Rembrandt. But my eye kept coming back to the man's metal collar or gorget. A gorget (pronounced /ˈɡɔrdʒɨt/) originally was a steel or leather collar designed to protect the throat. It was a feature of older types of armour and intended to protect against swords and other non-projectile weapons. Later, particularly from the 18th century onwards, the gorget became primarily ornamental, serving only as a symbolic accessory on military uniforms.
Something didn't quite fit there. Some people must have thought I was crazy when I stood there staring at the painting with my head turned to one side. Only when I looked almost completely upside down is when I noticed what had been bothering me. I finally noticed what was going on with this image. If you look at the man's face and then at the subtle reflection in the collar you notice that they are not the same. Not even the same person. Below is a magnified image of this part of the painting.
You can clearly see a face with on the left side some dark bushy hair sticking out. That image is not the man in the painting itself. But that description does fit someone we know very well: Rembrandt himself. We know that Rembrandt did not use a lot of visual tricks like this, meaning that if this turns out to be indeed a hidden self portrait then it's quite rare, even singular. Experts do believe that in his famous painting The Night Watch there might be a hidden self portrait of Rembrandt in the far distance peaking out from behind a row of soldiers. That means that at least it would not be impossible for him to consider pulling such a trick. From a stylistic perspective however the hidden subtle portrait in the metal collar would be a very different avenue and
more something that Vermeer might have done. We have to distinguish the hidden Rembrandt in The Night Watch a different trick than what we see here. If indeed Rembrandt painting himself in the reflection of the metal then it would be a case of anamorphosis.
Anamorphosis is a distorted projection or perspective requiring the viewer to use special devices or occupy a specific vantage point to reconstitute the image. "Ana - morphosis" comes from the Greek words meaning "formed again." There are two main types of anamorphosis: Perspective (oblique) and Mirror (catoptric). Examples of perspectival anamorphosis date to the early Renaissance (15th Century), whereas examples of mirror anamorphosis (or catoptric anamorphosis) occurred at the time of the baroque (17th century). In the case of this Rembrandt we would have a catrophic anamorphosis.
What about evidence for this hidden portrait? To satisfy myself with the validity of what I thought I was seeing, I took apart the painting of the man with the gold chain and cut out the area of the collar (see the middle part of the image below). I then used a known Rembrandt self portrait and applied the specific geometric distortion of what a reflection of the o
riginal would look like (see the top part of the image below). I then did the same with the face of the actual portrait to see if that gave the result we would expect to see considering it is what Rembrandt would have had to paint in order to make the reflection be accurate.
The results are rather interesting and better than I expected. As you can see from the Photoshop composite the center image is a cutout of the metal collar and was not adjusted or changed at all. At the bottom you can see the mirrored or reflected copy of the original man's face and skewed the cutout in such a way to more or less mimic the distortions of the metal. Of course this could have been done much more realistically in a 3D modeling program to exactly replicate the shape of the metal collar, but then again Rembrandt himself did not have access to these tools either and he more or less used the same method I applied. The image does not in the least fit the reflection and this to me means that whatever the reflection represents, it is not the man in the painting. The most striking evidence is the formation and positioning of the hair. If indeed what we see in the reflection is the old man in the painting then the hair would have been placed towards the lower portion of the head, like in the adjusted cutout we see at the bottom. However the hair is placed toward the upper part of the head instead, which is inconsistent with a reflection. What is more compelling is that the reflection we see isn't a reflection at all. The head in the reflection isn't mirrored but instead positioned in a normal upright position.
If we now take a cutout of one of Rembrandt's self portraits and apply the same distortions but do not mirror the image we get a fairly good estimate of the reflection. I opted not to apply any kind of filters such as blurring since I did not want to have any unintentional steering or biasing of the results. Meaning that as you start to apply filters and techniques there is a danger that you unconsciously try to fit the image with what you want to see. What I find most astonishing, and something you have to see for yourself in the museum, is the fact that the light and dark properties of the reflection actually pretty well match what we know as a Rembrandt self portrait. It is as if he wasn't even trying to hide this curiosity but placed it right in front of our eyes.
reepy feeling something wasn't quite right with the painting. A few weeks ago on my second visit I decided to try and see if I could find what wasn't matching up in my mind. As a reference I've included a shot of the painting in question to the right. Click the image for a detailed version.
There is absolutely nothing odd about the colours, composition, texture, anything. It's a typical run of the mill perfect Rembrandt. But my eye kept coming back to the man's metal collar or gorget. A gorget (pronounced /ˈɡɔrdʒɨt/) originally was a steel or leather collar designed to protect the throat. It was a feature of older types of armour and intended to protect against swords and other non-projectile weapons. Later, particularly from the 18th century onwards, the gorget became primarily ornamental, serving only as a symbolic accessory on military uniforms.
Something didn't quite fit there. Some people must have thought I was crazy when I stood there staring at the painting with my head turned to one side. Only when I looked almost completely upside down is when I noticed what had been bothering me. I finally noticed what was going on with this image. If you look at the man's face and then at the subtle reflection in the collar you notice that they are not the same. Not even the same person. Below is a magnified image of this part of the painting.
You can clearly see a face with on the left side some dark bushy hair sticking out. That image is not the man in the painting itself. But that description does fit someone we know very well: Rembrandt himself. We know that Rembrandt did not use a lot of visual tricks like this, meaning that if this turns out to be indeed a hidden self portrait then it's quite rare, even singular. Experts do believe that in his famous painting The Night Watch there might be a hidden self portrait of Rembrandt in the far distance peaking out from behind a row of soldiers. That means that at least it would not be impossible for him to consider pulling such a trick. From a stylistic perspective however the hidden subtle portrait in the metal collar would be a very different avenue and
more something that Vermeer might have done. We have to distinguish the hidden Rembrandt in The Night Watch a different trick than what we see here. If indeed Rembrandt painting himself in the reflection of the metal then it would be a case of anamorphosis.
Anamorphosis is a distorted projection or perspective requiring the viewer to use special devices or occupy a specific vantage point to reconstitute the image. "Ana - morphosis" comes from the Greek words meaning "formed again." There are two main types of anamorphosis: Perspective (oblique) and Mirror (catoptric). Examples of perspectival anamorphosis date to the early Renaissance (15th Century), whereas examples of mirror anamorphosis (or catoptric anamorphosis) occurred at the time of the baroque (17th century). In the case of this Rembrandt we would have a catrophic anamorphosis.
What about evidence for this hidden portrait? To satisfy myself with the validity of what I thought I was seeing, I took apart the painting of the man with the gold chain and cut out the area of the collar (see the middle part of the image below). I then used a known Rembrandt self portrait and applied the specific geometric distortion of what a reflection of the o
riginal would look like (see the top part of the image below). I then did the same with the face of the actual portrait to see if that gave the result we would expect to see considering it is what Rembrandt would have had to paint in order to make the reflection be accurate.
The results are rather interesting and better than I expected. As you can see from the Photoshop composite the center image is a cutout of the metal collar and was not adjusted or changed at all. At the bottom you can see the mirrored or reflected copy of the original man's face and skewed the cutout in such a way to more or less mimic the distortions of the metal. Of course this could have been done much more realistically in a 3D modeling program to exactly replicate the shape of the metal collar, but then again Rembrandt himself did not have access to these tools either and he more or less used the same method I applied. The image does not in the least fit the reflection and this to me means that whatever the reflection represents, it is not the man in the painting. The most striking evidence is the formation and positioning of the hair. If indeed what we see in the reflection is the old man in the painting then the hair would have been placed towards the lower portion of the head, like in the adjusted cutout we see at the bottom. However the hair is placed toward the upper part of the head instead, which is inconsistent with a reflection. What is more compelling is that the reflection we see isn't a reflection at all. The head in the reflection isn't mirrored but instead positioned in a normal upright position.
If we now take a cutout of one of Rembrandt's self portraits and apply the same distortions but do not mirror the image we get a fairly good estimate of the reflection. I opted not to apply any kind of filters such as blurring since I did not want to have any unintentional steering or biasing of the results. Meaning that as you start to apply filters and techniques there is a danger that you unconsciously try to fit the image with what you want to see. What I find most astonishing, and something you have to see for yourself in the museum, is the fact that the light and dark properties of the reflection actually pretty well match what we know as a Rembrandt self portrait. It is as if he wasn't even trying to hide this curiosity but placed it right in front of our eyes.