The subject is how a woman looks at sorrow, at impending death, at what still needs to be said. The subject is how a woman gazes at herself.

All her working life, Kollwitz has followed Rembrandt's practice of depicting herself, but she has never embraced the role-playing that delighted Rembrandt. She faces herself without finery or feathers. She dons a simple cloak and shows herself in profile. It is only fourteen years since Jacobi's photograph, but she has become an old woman. Her line and the sense of herself are still completely sure: the great swooping back and shoulders, the clean uncluttered composition. Light spills onto her forehead. The country she has tried to rouse is hell-bent on destruction, but Kollwitz still bears witness. Within a few months, her house will be destroyed by bombs. Her health failing, she will write to her family and her friends that death is close. But in this last self-portrait, death does not maker her flinch. Her gaze does not waver. He might say the same thing about Kollwitz the artist as about Kollwitz the subject; her vision is clear, her force, her fury, and her charity undeterred. She knows what she sees.

from Snite Museum of Art, Face to Face (Notre Dame, 2003)