EPPH - Every Painter Paints Himself

This portrait, A Young Woman in a Black Cap, was acquired (stolen?) by Hermann Goering during WWII and, after a succession of owners, sold again at Sotheby's in 2009.  Once thought to have been painted by a follower of Rembrandt, the Rembrandt Research Group now gives full authorship, after its recent cleaning, to the master himself. 

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Most significantly, for our purposes, the sitter was once thought to depict Rembrandt's sister. She certainly resembles him. Indeed, so many portraits by great masters were once thought to be "self-portraits", or related to the artist, that resistance to the idea that every painter paints himself is somewhat baffling. How else can one explain how so many portrait sitters resemble the artist?

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It is worth noting that Rembrandt's forehead in three self-portraits, each made shortly before this portrait, is divided diagonally into light and shade, leaving one eye lit, the other dark. While appearing natural, the diagonal division of the forehead poetically conveys two forms of artistic vision: those of exterior reality and insight.

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Perhaps Rembrandt thought that one eye in bright light, the other in deep shade, on this woman would not be flattering or the lighting too harsh. However, he still conveyed the same meaning by placing the cap, not the shadow, at the same angle, a formal link that artists familiar with Rembrandt's visual poetry would have recognized. Half her "mind" is bathed in light, the other in darkness. As so many artists have done, Rembrandt turned this sitter (if she existed) into his feminine self, a fertile self, and a creative symbol of his mind. The artist and sitter, like the artist and artwork, have become one.