In 1669, Rembrandt was sixty-three years old. It was the last year of his life, and he painted three more self-portraits. They are now held by the Uffizi in Florence, the National Gallery in London, and the Mauritshuis in The Hague.

It was striking that, a few days ago, two of the three appeared in Shanghai at the same time: one in the Uffizi self-portrait exhibition at Dongyi Museum, the other in Botticelli to Van Gogh: Masterpieces from the National Gallery. From the Bund to People’s Square, these two late Rembrandts met again after more than 350 years and half a world apart.

The history of the Uffizi portrait is unusual. Cosimo III de’ Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany, acquired it directly from the ageing Rembrandt. Cosimo made two grand tours of Europe, in 1667 and 1669, and visited Rembrandt in Amsterdam on both occasions. He probably bought this self-portrait from the painter’s studio in June 1669. By November, when Cosimo returned to Florence and placed it in the Pitti Palace collection, Rembrandt had died.

The old man turns slightly to one side but looks straight at us. His lips are pressed together, pushing out his cheeks in an expression of impatience. He is dressed heavily and formally, with a blurred medal at his chest and the large beret he often wore.

After it was painted, the work went almost directly into a museum collection. Apart from a few years in Paris after Napoleon took it there, it remained in Florence. Its provenance is unusually clear, and there is detailed documentation and research. Still, over the centuries, many questions have gathered around it.

Recent research suggests that the painting may have been substantially cut down within its first few years, then later enlarged again with additions around the edges. The composition we see now feels a little cramped. The original may have included his right shoulder and his left hand holding painting tools—because Rembrandt painted from a mirror, the hands appear reversed. A signature and date may also have been cut away. When it entered the Uffizi collection, it may have been extended again to bring it into line with a standard format. I wrote about this accident in my post on the Uffizi self-portraits: at one point, a director of the museum cut many paintings to standard sizes so that they could hang in a neat row.

The surface has also been altered several times. There are traces of changes to the collar and the hat. Its condition is not especially good: discoloured varnish, together with old dirt settled into the valleys of the brushwork, has made the image dark and indistinct. To me, that darkness and indistinctness give it a stronger, more solid presence.

The portrait shown at the Shanghai Museum is one of the National Gallery’s two Rembrandt self-portraits. The other is the famous self-portrait made when he was thirty-four. At that age, Rembrandt was at the height of his life and career. He was the most successful painter in the Netherlands, had bought a grand house on Jodenbreestraat, and was married to the beautiful Saskia. In that earlier self-portrait he is full of spirit, dressed in a slightly comic historical costume, perhaps imitating Titian and perhaps challenging him.

Here, the sharpness of youth has gone. There is not even the wry smile of the Uffizi portrait. His hair is still white and disordered; his eyes are clouded, but still bright. What remains is a paler, calmer old man.

This painting had already been in London for more than three hundred years. It was recorded at a London auction in 1722, a few decades after Rembrandt’s death, where it sold for eighty pounds. In 1851, it entered the National Gallery for 430 pounds.

It, too, was changed while it was being painted. His left hand originally held a palette and brushes, but Rembrandt painted them out and made the hands appear clasped instead. The canvas was also cut unevenly—about five centimetres from the left and one from the right—so that the faint signature and date on the left were partly lost. Though this picture is much larger than the Uffizi one, it is possible that the two were originally the same size. We may never know why they were cut as they were.

The National Gallery painting has been more carefully restored. Solvents removed old varnish and dirt, cracks were filled with pigments similar to those used at the time, and a new varnish was applied. The image we see now is therefore cleaner and clearer. The National Gallery has long been bold in its conservation: its relatively small collection has been cleaned thoroughly, and the staff are always looking for old frames that better suit the pictures. Looking through my photographs, I noticed that this self-portrait had changed frames too—from the restrained Dutch ebony frame I saw in London three years ago to today’s elaborate French carved frame.

The third self-portrait belongs to the Mauritshuis in The Hague. Some scholars believe that it was his true last self-portrait.

Here he looks older. His hair has grown longer, the wrinkles are deep, and his chin has loosened. Compared with the first two, his expression is flatter, almost a little cautious. I still remember seeing this picture six or seven years ago. It felt as though I were facing a gentle grandfather: no aggression, no mystery, as if he only wanted to open his mouth and ask you the time.

Although the three paintings were made close together, their details and handling differ greatly. Rembrandt was still trying new things. In his final decade, his style had changed greatly from before: rougher and simpler, but more deeply expressive.

For Rembrandt, that last year may have been only another ordinary year in a long period of difficulty. Saskia, the wife he loved, had been dead for twenty-seven years. Hendrickje, who later lived with him, had died six years earlier. The year before, his son Titus had also died, leaving behind a newly married, pregnant wife. The peak of Rembrandt’s career was already more than twenty years behind him. Eleven years earlier he had been forced into bankruptcy, moved out of the house of which he had once been proud, and rented a home in the outskirts. In those years, his house, paintings and collections were sold off by the authorities. Commissions became fewer. He kept painting, but creditors often took the works away to settle debts. He never escaped those debts before he died.

We do not know many precise details about his final years. He is usually imagined as completely impoverished: there are records that he sold Saskia’s grave plot to raise money for Hendrickje’s burial, and some literary accounts make his old age wholly miserable—drunkenness, illness, confusion.

But I do not think his later years were quite so bleak. He remained lucid and strong, and he was still deeply respected by his contemporaries. The simplest reason is that the Grand Duke of Tuscany could hardly have paid two visits to a man who had entirely lost his dignity. In the records kept by Cosimo III’s entourage, Rembrandt is consistently called a “famous painter”. Other texts of the period call him “the miracle of our age”. His work was no longer as sought after as it had been, but commissions continued to arrive, and some patrons continued to support him.

He also made active efforts with his finances. Through legal means, he transferred some of the property left after the auction to Titus. Hendrickje and Titus ran a business dealing in his works in their own names, separate from him and protected from his creditors, while supporting his life. He employed a lawyer to settle a financial dispute with a former live-in maid. Even the house they later rented was a three-storey home with room and light for a proper studio.

As for his state of mind, I think the best evidence is still his self-portraits.

In the year he went bankrupt, at fifty-two, he painted one of his most imposing self-portraits. The low viewpoint makes his body monumental. The golden edge of his clothes, the fur cloak, the solid walking stick and the expression that looks down on the world make him seem like an emperor of art. It is clearly a response to the chaos of reality, and a refusal of it.

A few years later, at fifty-nine and in increasingly difficult circumstances, he painted the famous self-portrait now at Kenwood House in London. With its two large circles behind him and painting tools in his hands, it seems to say: I am still the most professional painter in the world.

Even in the three self-portraits from his final year, the scale and drama are more restrained, but their atmosphere and force remain extraordinary. He was old, but he had not compromised, and he had not been broken.

Rembrandt is often thought to have pursued an absolute truth, which was one reason some patrons found him difficult. He was just as demanding with himself. When young, he painted himself making faces and posing as a beggar, perhaps as practice, perhaps as a joke aimed at a society full of false seriousness. After Saskia died, the self he painted became gradually more severe and more profound. Kenneth Clark wrote in Looking at Pictures:

On that sorrowful face, every attempt at disguise has been abandoned.

The merry drinker is gone; so is the rebel pulling faces.

He no longer needs to make faces. Time, and all the spectacles of the human world, have made one for him.

For further reading on the Uffizi self-portrait exhibition—where I had the date of this Rembrandt wrong at the time—see The Expressions of Old Acquaintances: Uffizi Master Self-Portraits.