The Artist's Mother in a Cloth Headdress (looking down)

Deeply wrinkled, careworn faces fascinated Rembrandt, as is evident in his portraits of his mother, who was a cooperative sitter early in his career. (While scholars believe the subject of these prints is Rembrandt's mother, it has never been proved.) He portrayed this model ten times, and she appeared in his colleagues' work, too. In 1633 Rembrandt started signing just his first name to his prints, putting himself in the company of the great one-name Italians-Michelangelo, Leonardo, Titian, and Raphael. Rembrandt's last name came from the site of his great-grandfather's windmill, on the banks of the Rhine (Rijn) River.