Pyeongye
01Where you've seen it
Portrait photographers talk about Rembrandt lighting. Put the light high and off to one side of the face, and a small triangle of light appears on the shadowed cheek. Because that light shows up so often in Rembrandt's portraits, it carries his name.
You'll find the term in photography textbooks and hear it on film and TV sets. Rembrandt has been dead for more than 350 years, and lighting crews still say his name.
02The real story
The Rembrandt self-portrait at Pyeongye was painted in Amsterdam in 1660, when he was fifty-four. Wearing a black beret, he looks straight out at us from the dark. The light gathers on his face, and everything else sinks into shadow.
A few years earlier, in 1656, he could not pay his debts and applied for bankruptcy. His big house and his art collection were sold at auction. Even so, he did not hide the lines on his forehead or the bags under his eyes. All his life Rembrandt looked in the mirror and painted his own face dozens of times.