17th century ‘selfies’ show at Dutch museum the Mauritshuis

A person looks at a self-portrait by Dutch master Rembrandt dated 1669 during a press preview of an exhibition called "Dutch Self-Portraits - Selfies of the Golden Age", at the Mauritshuis museum in The Hague, Wednesday Oct. 7, 2015. These days, anybody with a smartphone can snap a selfie in a split second. Back in the Golden Age of Dutch painting, they were called self-portraits and were the preserve of trained artists who thought long and hard about every aspect of such a painting. Now the museum is staging an exhibition focusing solely on these 17th Century self-portraits that highlights the similarities but also the significant differences between modern-day snapshots and historic works of art. (AP Photo/Mike Corder) A person looks at a self-portrait by Dutch master Rembrandt dated 1669 during a press preview of an exhibition called "Dutch Self-Portraits - Selfies of the Golden Age", at the Mauritshuis museum in The Hague, Wednesday Oct. 7, 2015. These days, anybody with a smartphone can snap a selfie in a split second. Back in the Golden Age of Dutch painting, they were called self-portraits and were the preserve of trained artists who thought long and hard about every aspect of such a painting. Now the museum is staging an exhibition focusing solely on these 17th Century self-portraits that highlights the similarities but also the significant differences between modern-day snapshots and historic works of art. (AP Photo/Mike Corder)

By Associated Press October 7, 2015 1 min read

THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) – These days, anybody with a smartphone can snap a selfie in a split second. Back in the Dutch Golden Age, they were called self-portraits and were the preserve of highly trained artists who thought long and hard about every aspect of the painting.

Now the Mauritshuis museum in The Hague is staging an exhibition focusing solely on these 17th century self-portraits, highlighting the similarities and the differences between modern-day snapshots and historic works of art.

The exhibition, opening Thursday and running through Jan. 3, features 27 self-portraits by artists ranging from Rembrandt van Rijn to his student Carel Fabritius – best known for “The Goldfinch,” which hangs elsewhere in the Mauritshuis – and Judith Leyster, whose self-portrait is on loan from the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.