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L'atelier de Rembrandt. La liberté, la peinture et l'argent
"Singularly interesting and stimulating. . . . A passionate and original work of scholarship."—Richard Wollheim, Times Literary Supplement
"With the publication [of Rembrandt's Enterprise], Svetlana Alpers has firmly established herself in the front ranks of art historians at work today. . . . The book is not a long one. Yet, there is more perceptive scholarship packed into its four chapters than is typically found in a whole shelf of the more common outpourings of academic writers. Rembrandt's Enterprise is less a book of archival discoveries than of fresh interpretation of the revered artist and his milieu. . . . Alpers makes us see how Rembrandt's complex and enormously popular art has embedded itself in our ways of thinking about who we are and how we live, even in the late 20th century."—Christopher Knight, Los Angeles Herald Examiner
"With the publication [of Rembrandt's Enterprise], Svetlana Alpers has firmly established herself in the front ranks of art historians at work today. . . . The book is not a long one. Yet, there is more perceptive scholarship packed into its four chapters than is typically found in a whole shelf of the more common outpourings of academic writers. Rembrandt's Enterprise is less a book of archival discoveries than of fresh interpretation of the revered artist and his milieu. . . . Alpers makes us see how Rembrandt's complex and enormously popular art has embedded itself in our ways of thinking about who we are and how we live, even in the late 20th century."—Christopher Knight, Los Angeles Herald Examiner
377 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1988
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About the author
Svetlana Alpers
24 books24 followersScholar of Dutch baroque art; professor of History of Art, UC Berkeley,1962-1994; exponent of the "new art history."
Born Sventlana Leontief, she graduated from Radcliffe College with a B.A. in 1957. She married the following year, assuming her husband's surname of Alpers. She continued graduate work in art history at Harvard University publishin an article on Vasari's verbal descriptions of art (ekphraseis) in 1960 in the Journal of the Warburg and Coutauld Institutes, which announced her innovative approach to art history. Alpers accepted a teaching position as an associate professor at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1962 while working on her dissertation. She graduated from Harvard in 1965, writing her thesis under Seymour Slive on the Peter Paul Rubens cycle Torre de la Parada. Her work in Rubens' archives brought her to the attention of Roger d'Hulst, who suggested she turn her dissertation into a volume for the catalogue raissoné on Rubens. She rose to the rank of Professor at Berkeley. In 1971 she was appointed to the Board of Directors of the College Art Associate (remained until 1976). That same year here volume for the Rubens catalogue raissoné, The Corpus Rubenianum Ludwig Burchard, number nine, was published.
In 1977 an important methodological article by Alpers appeared in Daedalus examining progressive scholarship in art history in contrast with earlier scholarship. During the academic year 1979-80 she was a member at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. In 1983, Alpers co-founded the progressive interdisciplinary journal Representations, publishing the article, "Interpretation without Representation, or, The Viewing of Las Meninas," in the first issue. That year, too, she published the first of her ground-breaking works in art history, The Art of Describing: Dutch Art in the Seventeenth Century. The book's central thesis focused on the the immediacy and simplicity of Dutch painting and the Dutch preoccupation with the description of interiors and domestic scenes, contrasting it with narrative Italian painting. Iconographical approaches to baroque art, she wrote, such as those practiced by Erwin Panofsky and others, were insufficient to understand Dutch imagery. Her book likewise criticized mainstream Dutch scholarship and its reliance on emblems and emblemata books explain Netherlandish still life paining. The Art of Describing was well received, reviewers hailing Alper's mastery of topics as diverse as optics and perspective theory. Critics, however, accused her of selective use of evidence, drawing only from paintings and texts which supported her theories.
In 1988, during the era of shocking reattributions of many works of Rembrandt by the Rembrandt Research Project, Alpers published a monograph on the artist, Rembrandt's Enterprise: The Studio and the Market The book examined Rembrandt's market strategies and his modeling his art to appeal to a Dutch consumer base. Her use of economic theory and a concerted avoidance of visual criteria again upset traditionalists in the art world.
Alpers co-wrote a book with fellow Berkeley art historian Michael Baxandall in 1994, Tiepolo and the Pictorial Intelligence. She was named Professor Emerita from Berkeley in 1994. The following year she returned to the art of the low countries with her Making of Rubens. The book looked at Rubens' politics, his later critical reception in France, and theorized specific meaning in the recurring Silenus figures of his later work.
Reaction to Alpers was summed up by Walter Liedtke. In an article on American historians of Dutch art, he characterized her work as containing "whole exclusions" of art that did not fit her thesis--such as the Utrecht school--a "typical exercise in American taste dressed up (with some French motifs) as a new analysis of Dutch Art." However, her work Rembrandt's Enterprise was included among the 169 major writings of art history in the 2010 Hauptwerke der Kunstgeschicht
Born Sventlana Leontief, she graduated from Radcliffe College with a B.A. in 1957. She married the following year, assuming her husband's surname of Alpers. She continued graduate work in art history at Harvard University publishin an article on Vasari's verbal descriptions of art (ekphraseis) in 1960 in the Journal of the Warburg and Coutauld Institutes, which announced her innovative approach to art history. Alpers accepted a teaching position as an associate professor at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1962 while working on her dissertation. She graduated from Harvard in 1965, writing her thesis under Seymour Slive on the Peter Paul Rubens cycle Torre de la Parada. Her work in Rubens' archives brought her to the attention of Roger d'Hulst, who suggested she turn her dissertation into a volume for the catalogue raissoné on Rubens. She rose to the rank of Professor at Berkeley. In 1971 she was appointed to the Board of Directors of the College Art Associate (remained until 1976). That same year here volume for the Rubens catalogue raissoné, The Corpus Rubenianum Ludwig Burchard, number nine, was published.
In 1977 an important methodological article by Alpers appeared in Daedalus examining progressive scholarship in art history in contrast with earlier scholarship. During the academic year 1979-80 she was a member at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. In 1983, Alpers co-founded the progressive interdisciplinary journal Representations, publishing the article, "Interpretation without Representation, or, The Viewing of Las Meninas," in the first issue. That year, too, she published the first of her ground-breaking works in art history, The Art of Describing: Dutch Art in the Seventeenth Century. The book's central thesis focused on the the immediacy and simplicity of Dutch painting and the Dutch preoccupation with the description of interiors and domestic scenes, contrasting it with narrative Italian painting. Iconographical approaches to baroque art, she wrote, such as those practiced by Erwin Panofsky and others, were insufficient to understand Dutch imagery. Her book likewise criticized mainstream Dutch scholarship and its reliance on emblems and emblemata books explain Netherlandish still life paining. The Art of Describing was well received, reviewers hailing Alper's mastery of topics as diverse as optics and perspective theory. Critics, however, accused her of selective use of evidence, drawing only from paintings and texts which supported her theories.
In 1988, during the era of shocking reattributions of many works of Rembrandt by the Rembrandt Research Project, Alpers published a monograph on the artist, Rembrandt's Enterprise: The Studio and the Market The book examined Rembrandt's market strategies and his modeling his art to appeal to a Dutch consumer base. Her use of economic theory and a concerted avoidance of visual criteria again upset traditionalists in the art world.
Alpers co-wrote a book with fellow Berkeley art historian Michael Baxandall in 1994, Tiepolo and the Pictorial Intelligence. She was named Professor Emerita from Berkeley in 1994. The following year she returned to the art of the low countries with her Making of Rubens. The book looked at Rubens' politics, his later critical reception in France, and theorized specific meaning in the recurring Silenus figures of his later work.
Reaction to Alpers was summed up by Walter Liedtke. In an article on American historians of Dutch art, he characterized her work as containing "whole exclusions" of art that did not fit her thesis--such as the Utrecht school--a "typical exercise in American taste dressed up (with some French motifs) as a new analysis of Dutch Art." However, her work Rembrandt's Enterprise was included among the 169 major writings of art history in the 2010 Hauptwerke der Kunstgeschicht
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
February 25, 2026
Il est très bien écrit donc facile a comprendre. J’aime énormément la façon d’aborder l’artiste et son œuvre. Comprendre son œuvre a travers ce qui l’entoure et une méthodologie que j’apprécie fortement. J’ai beaucoup appris sur cet homme que je ne connaissais pas du tout et j’en suis très reconnaissante envers Svetlana Alpers qui a rendu l’expérience aussi agréable.
January 26, 2020
122 pages of pure beauty.
October 17, 2024
C’était pour la fac du coup le côté scolaire et stress de ma vie m’a pas vraiment fait kiffer. Mais le concept et l’idée globale du livre est hyper intéressante !
May 11, 2025
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FROM BOOK: L'autoritratto: Una storia culturale (James Hall)
FROM BOOK: L'autoritratto: Una storia culturale (James Hall)
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews