Rembrandt

Art & Ideas (Phaidon)

by Mariet Westermann, Matthias Grasslin (Translator), Catherine Makarius (Translator)

A survey of the life and times of Rembrandt van Rijn, one of the most famous and well-loved artists. From his precocious early work in his native Leyden to his emotional late work and his immense artistic influence, Rembrandt's life is traced within the context of the Netherlands in the 17th century, the highly literate and cosmopolitan environment of Amsterdam and Rembrandt's wealthy and influential patrons.

Genres: Art, Art History, Nonfiction

352 pages, Paperback

First published January 10, 2000

Reviews

[Isabella · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 ⭐️

seriously sped run this one 🏃‍♂️

[John · Rating 5 out of 5]

There is more than enough information to satisfy any art history student or fan. For a small book, it has a good, well documented life history, along with many of the most important offerings by this towering talent.

[John Lunger · Rating 3 out of 5]

A lot of good analysis of a renowned artist, but drags at some points. I couldn’t fit all of the excerpts I had, so that’s should speak for itself.

National Gallery of Art has a lot of great Rembrandt paintings, was a great opportunity to see those as well as his early works in the Getty while reading this.

Quotes/Excerpts:
- Rembrandt’s incessant representation of his face and body suggests a Cartesian belief in the actuality and relevance of the self, a faith constantly tested in the analysis of one’s mental state, but a faith nonetheless.
- (On The Rich Man from Christ’s Parable) Once again Rembrandt staged a biblical theme in an intimate setting using a cramped office for Christ’s parable of the rich man who ‘stores up treasure for himself, and is not rich toward God’ (Luke 12:13-21). Rembrandt derived both the theme of this picture – a mediation on avarice – and the crucible from followers of Caravaggio in Utrecht, including Hendrick ter Brugghen. The old man, the carefully observed refraction of light through the glasses, the strong chiaroscuro and rather monochrome coloring have their origin in these sources. Yet Rembrandt’s end result is markedly different in scale and effort from their large canvases, as it draws equally on contemporary innovations in Dutch still life. The picture’s small size, cool coloring and striking pile of books, documents and coins align it with the still-life arrangements of the Leiden artist Jan Davidsz de Heem… The rich old man ignores the vanity of the worldly still life of which he is the center. No mere instrument of avarice, the scales also symbolize God’s ultimate reckoning. The Rich Man is especially appealing for Rembrandt’s new ability to settle a figure into its surroundings by using rhythmic yet varied outlines, none of which overlaps more than is necessary to create a cosy clutter.
- (On The Old Men Disputing) The robes and beards of the two men indicate that they are not modern scholars but probably religious figures, identified by Christian Tümpel as the apostles Peter and Paul. The man with the balding head and rounded beard fits the traditional type of Saint Peter, and the travel pouch beneath the books on the floor seems to confirm the suggestion that the scene represents Paul’s visit to Peter, recorded in Galatians 1:18. More significantly than the precise narrative is a Rembrandt’s transformation of it into a compelling debate between two scholars. Paul, the most influential Christian exegete, leans forward, his mouth open in speech, his index finger resting on the page. Listening quietly, Peter prepares to respond by marking two places in the book. The juxtaposition of the hands and the book near the bright center of the painting underscores the importance of God’s Word. In their seriousness, Rembrandt’s saints are ideal practitioners of the biblical study promoted by Calvinism; they also represent model scholars in a town that prides itself on its Protestant university and honored Peter as its patron Saint.
- His emphasis on the face and avoidance heightened emotional expression suggested the presence of measured, sincere individuals, even if comparisons of his portraits make clear that Rembrandt’s remarkably ‘natural’ style conferred a certain sameness on his sitters. Rembrandt’s portrait style perfectly accords with Huygens’ remark that, for a portrait to become ‘a unique revelation of someone’s soul,’ it should eschew such artificial effects as wildly expressive eyes, an abrupt turn of the neck, a falsely charming mouth.
- As Willem Goeree put it in 1682, in a treatise on the correct representation of the human figure: “the greatest variability of the faces exists but in four remarkable parts or aspects that make up the face: namely in the forehead, the nose, the mouth with the chin: which parts, when seen from the side, deliver the most remarkable and characteristic traits.”
- A sonnet published in 1630 by the preacher Jacobus Revius has been persuasively compared to Rembrandt’s self-portrait (The Raising of the Cross): ‘Tis not the Jews who crucified, Nor who betrayed you in the judgement place, Nor who, Lord Jesus, spat into your face, Nor who with buffets struck you as you died……. I am the one, oh Lord, who brought you there, I am the heavy tree, too stout to bear, I am rope that reined you in. The scourge that flayed you, nail and spear, The blood-soaked crown they made you wear, ‘Twas all for me, alas, ‘twas for my sin.
- (On John the Baptist Preaching) Several artists before Rembrandt, including Pieter Bruegel the Elder (c.1525-69), had represented the Baptist’s audience as a diverse crowd, but Rembrandt’s painting is especially complex. His variety of gestures to render states of listening is unique: heads cocked, ears turned to John, hands raised to pensive faces. The truly novel motifs of his painting, however, appear in the dark foreground shadows. On the right a mother helps her child defecate in a stream; on the left, two dogs fight and two others copulate. A fifth dog squats to relieve himself in the shadow of the group of Pharisees. Although contemporaries cherished such lowly details in farces, they often questioned such base humor in historical scenes. Rembrandt’s pupil Van Hoogstraeten found them inappropriate as he recalled in his treatise of 1678: “in a certain nicely composed piece by Rembrandt, representing a Preaching John the Baptist, I saw a marvelous attention in the listeners of all stripes: this deserved the highest praise, but one also saw in it a dog, who mounted a bitch in unedifying fashion. You may say this happens and is natural, I say that it is a reprehensible indecency in this story; and that, from this addition, one would sooner say, that this piece showed the Preaching of the Cynic Diogenes, than of Saint John. Such representations reveal the master’s silly mind…” Most of these vignettes are painted on a strip of canvas that Rembrandt added after he had painted the central scene. He expanded the painting’s height by 20 cm (7 7/8 inches) and its width by 30 cm (11 3/4 inches), and pasted the composite canvas onto a panel. While the work’s unconventional elements evoke John’s self-imposed roughness and illustrate humanity’s earthly condition, they also appear aimed to shock a polite audience, in the manner of Rembrandt’s Self-Portrait with Saskia. Perhaps Van Hoogstraeten, who was much more concerned about the reputation of painting, objected to this provocative tone. Yet Rembrandt’s rigorous naturalism served artistic ends, too, for it allowed him to vary John’s flock to its limits. The picture’s appealing diversity was appreciated by both Van Hoogstraeten and Houbraken, who had no patience with violations of artistic decorum but chose to ignore the dogs, praising Rembrandt’s ‘natural representations of the audience’s facial features, and the ever-changing costumes’. Erudite viewers could well have described the qualities Van Hoogstraeten and Houbraken admired with the Latin terms copia (‘fullness’) and varietas (‘diversity’). Derived from the classical theory of rhetoric, copia and varietas were highly valued in speech making and storytelling, and the painting’s myriad motifs can be seen as elements of John’s own oration, which chastised the sins of the world that Christ would take away: thus the defecating dog is placed next to the priests rebuked by John.
- (On the Abduction of Ganymede) Echoing Platonic philosophy, Van Mander claimed that Ganymede represents the pure soul striving toward God; to immortalize him, Jupiter changed him into constellation Aquarius, the Water Bearer, who pours rain upon the Earth. Although Rembrandt’s Ganymede waters the earth, it is difficult to see him as the pure soul seeking God. The cherries held by the child are ambiguous, too: while they are traditional symbols of purity as well as lust, here they are surely remnants of an interrupted snack. The picture seems an elaborate joke for insiders, requiring knowledge of mythology and artistic tradition to be appreciated fully.
- (on Belshazzar’s feast) The story challenged Rembrandt to represent a supernatural event in convincing terms and to capture the extreme state of agitation it occasioned… Rembrandt’s Hebrew inscription is more directly indebted to the scholarly culture of Amsterdam, however. Although the text is correctly written from right to left, the arrangement of the whole in vertical columns is unconventional. Rembrandt’s acquaintance Menasseh ben Israel was to publish the inscription in 1639. Following ancient rabbinical interpretation, Menasseh suggested that God wrote his text in this way to make it incomprehensible to Belshazzar but legible to Daniel. Rembrandt’s inclusion of such lore bespeaks contemporary interest in Hebrew tradition. In Amsterdam, Christian scholars scoured Judaic sources to clarify in local passages, and Jewish thinkers consulted Christian writings.
- (On The Binding of Samson) If Rembrandt’s Belshazzar is the image of the idolatrous heathen and his Abraham the picture of living faith, his Samson is the quintessential flawed hero. There is no crueler painting of the binding of Samson that Rembrandt’s… Rembrandt’s Samson is not the classically muscular giant painted by Rubens and many Italian artists, but a debased Laocoön. His coarse features and bloated belly mark a sinful body, making it all the more wondrous, Rembrandt appears to suggest, that he should be forgiven to work God’s will.
- Rembrandt’s experience of epic theatre was perhaps most relevant to his storytelling. Vondel and De Koningh structured their tragedies around a sudden change, usually for the worse, in the fortunes of Gijsbreght, Oedipus, Samson, David and similar heroes. They borrowed this concept from the Greek notion of peripeteia, the sudden reversal that was a central device in Aristotle’s dramatic theory. The peripeteia was intended to purify the viewer’s emotions by evoking both misericordia (pity) for the hero and horror (revulsion) at his fate. The hero’s agnitio or recognition of the weakness that caused his misfortune made him a moral exemplar.
- Later in the century the literary society Nil Volentibus Arduum (‘Nothing is difficult to those who strive’) prescribed ‘Unusualness of Story’ as a requirement of all good theatre. ‘Unusualness’ could be achieved by choosing a unique or rarely represented theme, or by adding unconventional emphasis to a familiar story. Rembrandt’s Wedding of Samson, Rape of Europa and John the Baptist Preaching meet these respective demands.
- (On Man in Polish Costume) The figure’s commanding pose and meticulous modeling have led scholars to propose that he was a Polish envoy to Holland. The costume appears to be outmoded for that date, however, and the man’s furrowed brow and dashing mustache indicate that the painting is a study in facial expression, refined lighting and exotic costuming – in other words, an unusually large tronie. These types of pictures by Rembrandt and his followers, recorded frequently in inventories, must have been valued for the artist’s power to invent a compelling yet imaginary person.
- (On Portrait of Agatha Bas) Her pose is unusually forthright for a seventeenth-century portrait of a woman: rather than turning towards her husband, she stands frontally. The light from top left (consistent in both portraits) creates soft shadows on the left side of her face, giving her features more pronounced relief than in more conventional portraits, where the woman's face is turned into the light and thus illuminated more evenly. The painterly refinement of her attire is equally arresting. Rembrandt tipped and curled the edges of her lace collar and cuffs, and layered her costume with judicious use of shadow and by contrasts of colour and textural illusion. Her white shirt-sleeves, delineated in dry, undulating strokes, appear puffy underneath the slit black sleeves of her outer garment, and the elegant tip of her bodice casts a shadow onto the brocaded dress below. Intricate knots, rosettes and jewellery are delicately sculpted in paint. The shadows of the bracelets are unexpectedly red, creating an impression of live flesh below lustrous pearls. Her luxurious dress may acknowledge her husband's successful cloth business, and it is fitting for a daughter of the prominent Bas family. The portraits would originally have been set in real ebony frames that further reduced the barrier between image and three-dimensional reality.
- (On the preparation of The Nighwatch) only two loosely related drawings of militia men survive, but x-ray photographs of The Nightwatch confirm that Rembrandt thoroughly prepared its complex composition, for he made few alterations in the course of painting.
- (On alterations of The Nightwatch) Both copies show that the painting was cut down seriously along the left and the top. In the left, two men and a child were removed and the space for the boy rushing forward became cramped. This damage was down around 1715, when the painting was made fit between two doors in the town hall.
- (Description of The Nightwatch as an action seen with comments from Van Hoogstraeton) It doesn't suffice for a painter to place his figures next to one another in rows, the way one sees here in Holland all too often in the militia halls. The true masters ensure that their entire work is unified ... Rembrandt observed this very well, according to many rather too well, in his militia painting in Amsterdam, making more work of the large image of his choice than of the individual portraits that had been commissioned from him. Nevertheless, in my opinion that same work, however flawed, will outlast all of its competitors because it is so painterly in thought, so dashing in the effortless placement of the figures, and so forceful that, according to some, in comparison all the other militia pieces there [in the Kloveniersdoelen] look like playing cards.
- (Further description of The Nightwatch) Banning Cocg is identified as a captain by his red sash, baton and dangling glove. He steps towards the viewer and extends his left hand with the rhetorical gesture of Anslo (see 101). Strongly foreshortened, his back-lit hand is an illusionist masterpiece; it gives forward thrust to his movement and marks the addressee of his summons by casting a precise shadow onto the lieutenant's gold jacket. Van Ruytenburgh has turned his head in profile to attend to the order as he steps in time with his captain. The apparent protrusion of his partisan in front of the picture surface, linked visually to Banning Cocq's projecting gesture, is the most spectacular of many such passages in the painting. Further back a musket, a lance, a banner and a pike come forward less insistently; this gradual loss of projection as objects recede in space mimics optical experience. Rembrandt achieved these effects by differentiating the paint texture, building up the pigments in foreground objects and flattening them for figures in the middle and background. Applying traditional atmospheric perspective, he used strong contrasts of colour and brightness to make the captain, lieutenant and man in red come forward. In the background, Rembrandt created more muted contrasts in a palette of grey, ochre, brown and green.

[Terri · Rating 4 out of 5]

I like this series on major artists; the art is in color and presented in chronological order, often showing pieces by other artists who were influential. I rated this less than the Rubens book because the narrative was not as strong or interesting, with less detail about Rembrandt’s personal life.

[Jeroen Van de Crommenacker · Rating 3 out of 5]

Useful biography/ art history of Rembrandt. Beautiful edition with lots of images.

[P.D.R. Lindsay · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very thorough look at Rembrandt and paintings. Excellent plates and illustrations.

Well written but rather a small book so that the print is tiny and the plates only paperback size. I'd have liked a bigger book to do full justice to the paintings.

Still the book is an excellent reference book and well worth reading.

[Kevin McDonagh · Rating 2 out of 5]

A rather dry and recounting of Rembrandt. Some may enjoy a linear presentation without personal embellishment but I was left wanting for any consistency in Rembrandt's actions and personality.