The Independent Recommends: The Five Best Shows

Rembrandt by Himself (National Gallery, London)

The self-portraits (right). The first and most searching autobiography in paint. The great pictorial statements of honesty and mortality, of the human depths. Thirty paintings. To 5 Sept

Bridget Riley (Serpentine Gallery, London)

The classic Op period: paintings from the 1960s and 1970s, blazing and shifting in black, white and magically elusive and illusive shades of grey. To 30 Aug

Shape of the Century (Salisbury Festival)

One hundred years of British sculpture - and they're all here: Epstein, Gill, Moore, Caro, Hepworth, Frink, Long, Kapoor, Gormley, Whiteread. To 19 Aug

Angel of Mercy (Leeds City Art Gallery)

Surrealism. It happened here. Fifty weird works by the likes of Eileen Agar, Paul Nash, Conroy Maddox and Humphrey Jennings. To 25 Jul

John Coplans (Dean Gallery, Edinburgh)

Portrait of the artist as a fat old naked man? Coplans' photo-tableaux of close-ups of his body present flesh beyond classification, vulnerable and monumental. To 25 Jul