It is one of the earliest of over forty painted self-portraits by Rembrandt, there is a copy in the collection of the National Trust which was created by his workshop.

Rembrandt, early in artistic development, concentrates mainly on the effect of light and how it falls on various materials, including the skin and the wall; practising the technique of chiaroscuro.

The light shines only on part of the shoulder, the neck, the right ear and the jaw, and through the cheek a little more on mouth and on the tip of the nose.

With thick pasty paint, he depicts the spot where the light first hits him, at the neck, where the sheen of his coat is almost as white as his collar.

The surface is covered with a variety of paint textures, with which Rembrandt approaches reality with great accuracy and, at only twenty-two years old, already shows his extraordinary technical skill.

[7][8] A year after the completion of this work, in 1629, Rembrandt painted another similar self-portrait, the face slightly differently lit, now belonging to the collection of the Alte Pinakothek in Munich.