About Physical and Cultural Aspects of Age.

Abstract

Aging has been a theme in art for a very long time. A marble sculpture known as The Old Market Woman from an early imperial period, now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, dates from AD 14–68 and is one of the earliest representations of old age (1). It is actually a copy of an even earlier work from the Hellenistic period. In the Renaissance, the theme of “three ages of man,” meaning youth, adulthood, and old age, engaged artists such as Giorgione (1478–1510) and his pupil Titian (1490–1576). Representation of aging is particularly striking in the oeuvre of Rembrandt Hermensz van Rijn (1606–1669) (Fig. 1) (2). He was born in Leiden and first was an apprentice to a minor portrait painter, Jacob van Swanenburgh. He then studied with Peter Lastman (1583–1633) in Amsterdam. Rembrandt became a successful portraitist and painter …