Rembrandt made 30 self-portrait etchings during the course of his career. Some are ‘true’ self-portraits, in which the artist is the manifest subject; others are imaginative character studies in exotic dress, a well-established genre of Dutch art. It would seem that Rembrandt's fascination with his own appearance extended to trying out different 'identities', seeing whether he became a different person when in a different guise, especially that of another time or culture.

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