He could not describe this portrait, which is in a private collection in Berlin, as he had never seen it, so he quoted M.Michel's description: "This extraordinary work, perhaps the last Rembrandt painted, is modelled with prodigious vigour and freedom.

With superb audacity, the master shows us once more the familiar features, on which age and sorrow have worked their will.

They are distorted, disfigured, almost unrecognisable.

But the free spirit is still unbroken.

The eyes that meet ours are still keen and piercing; they have even the old twinkle of good-humoured irony, and the toothless mouth relaxes in frank laughter.