Rembrandt's Creation of the Pictorial Metaphor of Self

Abstract

Rembrandt van Rijn created the largest number of self-portraits of any major artist in history. On the basis of the interactionist conception of created metaphor, Rembrandt's production of an artistic genre of pictorial metaphor of self is described. Through a consistent compositional and content unification of the expressive portrait mouth with diverse types of costumes, he created an organic artistic model of meaningful and beautiful self-portraiture. Rembrandt's self as presented metaphorically represents the universe of art and artist. Because this compositional pictorial metaphor of self feature has not previously been recognized, a controlled empirical study was done indicating the significant characteristic association with Rembrandt's oeuvre. Creation of this metaphor is postulated as resulting from his use of the cognitive creative homospatial process—actively conceiving two or more discrete entities occupying the same mentally represented space, a conception leading to the articulation of new identities.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

I appreciate the participation in the rating experiment of raters Thomas Linton and Michael Mark. Patricia O'Connor gave helpful counsel with statistical procedures.

Notes

¹This type of metaphor has been designated with both terms (See Aldrich 1968; Carroll 1994; McGuire 1999; Forceville 2002) with resulting different aesthetic implications. Rather than enter this issue here, I shall adopt the pictorial/visual (p/v) designation.