Status Updates From سیمای رامبراند

امیدوارم بتونم امروز خوندنش رو تموم کنم 👐🏻

تئاتر و تماشاخانه در نظر رامبراند مهد طبیعی زندگی او محسوب می شد و در آنجا خود را از همه جا آسوده تر می یافت.

پ ن: خوندنش دقیقا مثل گشت و گذار تو یه موزه و در حال صحبت کردن از تاریخ هنر اونم تو دوره قرون وسطی و بعدشه.

The next chapter is entitled "The Plague". I didn't know there was one that recent. Maybe it's a metaphor.

"Today his paintings are scattered all over the world, less than fifty in the Netherlands, thirty in London, Berlin, New York and St. Petersburg two dozen each." As he aged young artists viewed him as hopelessly old-fashioned. Sure, try to buy one these days. Who do you think of when you think of an artist? Leonardo and Rembrandt!

Rembrandt was so heavily in debt he put his house in his son's name. It doesn't sound like he made a heck of a lot from his paintings. He would be upset about how much they're worth these days. Not even Elon Musk could afford one.

Shockingly Rembrandt had his paramour Geertje sent off to an insane asylum for twelve years. She wanted him to marry her. He couldn't without losing all of his dead wife Saskia's property.

Saskia, Rembrandt's wife, dies. He had an affair with his son's nurse Geertje
Dirckx, which gets him in trouble with the powers that be. He is reclusive and paints little for ten years after her death.

Charles L. Mee Jr. tells who the people were in Rembrandt's "Night Watch".

Rembrandt bought a big house he couldn't afford and it affected his painting. He had to return to portrait painting which he wasn't all that fond of.

Rembrandt was sometimes criticized for adding inappropriate sidelines to his paintings. In one there's a dog defecating in a corner. The picture is of a saint preaching the word of God.

Rembrandt did several paintings of his wife, Danae. Sounds like he was teasing her: "She is a dairy-fed Dutch woman, smooth and round, not skinny; Her breasts are not large, but she has a nice, round fertile belly, the size almost of a basketball."

I guess one of Rembrandt's first great works was "The Anatomy Lesson".
There's a lot of sympathy for the poor guy (who was hanged for stealing a cloak) mainly the indignity of being poured over by a bunch of ghouls.

Rembrandt gets an assignment painting a portrait of a master shipbuilder of the Dutch East India Co., his first big commission.

As a young painter Rembrandt had a really sketchy dealer, a guy named Uylenburgh. An art dealer usually would get a percentage of a sale, but Uylenburgh made his artist pay to get into his operation in the first place. For this money Rembrandt could make copies of any of the paintings of any of Uylenburgh's other clients, and they could copy him, which led to a lot of speculation in the future.

Rembrandt's first professional painting was "The Stoning of St. Stephen". What set him apart from other painters was the drama in his painting.

Author Charles L. Mee Jr. spends a lot of time describing Amsterdam. At the time (the early 1600's) Amsterdam was the trade capital of Europe, if not the world. I'm assuming Rembrandt painted a lot of the scenery and some of the people he describes.

At first Rembrandt was a disappointment to his family but he was apparently a willful boy who insisted on being apprenticed to a real life artist. He was put with Jacob van Swanenburg at aged 13 and worked with him for three years. His first paintings featured the poor, working class.

This book needs the pictures to go with it. It is distracting to stop and find a photo of each painting mentioned. On the other hand, although it becomes a slow read time wise, it is making it memorable and interactive. I'm saving each painting to a Pinterest board.

Interesting, I bought this book through Bookbub under the title, "Rembrandt a Life." I only found it here by searching the ISBN.