Rembrandt van Rijn

Rembrandt reworked several of his largest drypoint plates, including the Three Crosses and Christ Presented to the People, across successive states. According to the National Gallery of Victoria, he erased large sections of the worn plates and added new elements, so that later states carry a different emphasis and mood; from the mid-1640s he also printed 'deluxe' impressions on imported Chinese and Japanese paper.

Rembrandt painted self-portraits in varied guises from the late 1620s through the 1630s, and some later ones refer openly to earlier masters. In an essay for The Leiden Collection Catalogue, H. Perry Chapman notes that his 1632 self-portrait in Glasgow was modeled on Rubens's 1623 self-portrait, and that his 1640 self-portrait in London referred to portraits by Raphael and Titian that he had seen in Amsterdam in 1639.

In an autobiographical text written around 1629-31, Constantijn Huygens described Rembrandt and Jan Lievens as self-assured young painters who had not yet found a study trip to Italy necessary. He reported their answer that they were in their prime and had no time for long journeys, and that the best Italian pictures of the kind princes collect were to be found outside Italy; Huygens called this a touch of folly in otherwise gifted artists.

The account is consistent with the independent_thinking score: a stated, reasoned decision to stay put despite a patron's evident disapproval, though Huygens's text is the only record of their reasoning. Independent Thinking

Joachim von Sandrart wrote in 1675 that Rembrandt was a great lover of paintings, drawings, prints and foreign curiosities, and had a large number of them. The inventory of his possessions drawn up in 1656 is the main record of the collection; a scholarly review of the Rembrandt House catalogue built on it notes that the collection was exceptional in art on paper, with prints by Lucas van Leyden and Raphael, and that the inventory also lists statuary, curiosities, weaponry and costumes used in his studio.

This is consistent with the curiosity score: a large collection kept alongside his studio, though the sources document the holdings more than his reasons for gathering them. Curiosity

Rembrandt moved from Leiden to Amsterdam in 1631/32, the city where the rest of his career took place. According to Chapman, he first worked with the painter-dealer Hendrick Uylenburgh, lodging in his house and heading his workshop, because he was not yet a citizen and could not open a studio of his own; by 1633 he had moved there permanently.