Symbolism, Imagery, Allegory
Can you imagine if you saw a Rembrandt painting of yourself? If you ask us, it seems like it could be both intensely cool, and also pretty unsettling. This very thing happens to Jacob when he finds himself confronted with his own face—but in a super old portrait hanging in a museum. Understandably, he is overcome with emotion.
Rembrandt is to Daan what Anne Frank is to Jacob. In other words, he feels a special, private connection to his work, and he loves to visit it in the museum. When he takes Jacob to see Rembrandt's painting, his cousin can see why. Check it out:
No picture he had ever seen had so absorbed and fixated him. He did not want to say this but made himself say yes. (8.21)
Jacob might love Anne Frank, but he's never felt this way about a painting before—so we see that it's not just literature or poetry that can move people then, but images as well. Plus, since Rembrandt's work means so much to Daan, sharing it with Jacob represents his opening up to him, which is pretty special in its own right.
Daan explains to Jacob that the painting that looks so much like him is actually a portrait of Titus van Rijn. Wait, isn't that Daan's last name too? Why yes, Shmoopsters, yes it is. While no one's suggesting that Daan is Rembrandt's relation, this coincidence (if you can all anything in a book a coincidence) reinforces the strength of the connection Daan feels to Rembrandt's work—it is almost familial in its strength.
And of course, since the painting looks like Jacob, we can go one step further with this symbol and argue that the connection he feels to Rembrandt's portrait of Titus represents the fact that this vacation Jacob is on is a sort of coming home for him. Not literally, of course—he's not about to move to Amsterdam any time soon—but metaphorically, since this trip reconnects him with his roots. That he has roots here in the first place is reinforced by the fact that there is a painting that looks just like him in the gallery.
We think this painting works on one more symbolic level, although it's pretty subtle. It was made a long time ago, right? Longer ago than Anne Frank's diary. Like Anne Frank's diary, however, it remains relevant in the present—it provides not only a link to the past, but a way of feeling connected to something in the present. And since Geertrui's memoirs play such an important role in this story, the Rembrandt painting nudges us toward assuming the words she has written will have a sort of timeless value as well.