The Second Oriental Head

Though Rembrandt is a marquee name today, he wasn’t always a big deal. In his early days he had to play catch-up to a slightly younger artist, also from his hometown of Leiden, named Jan Lievens. Eventually they developed a friendly rivalry that made each artist strive to be better. For example, in the early 1630s, Lievens etched a series of imaginary portraits. A few years later, Rembrandt copied four of them, all mirror images due to the reversal inherent in the printing process. Rembrandt acknowledged his debt to Lievens by signing them Rembrandt geretuckert—Rembrandt retouched.