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Rembrandt van Rijn
(Encyclopaedia
Britannica)
born July 15, 1606, Leiden, Neth.
died Oct. 4, 1669, Amsterdam
in full Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn Dutch painter, draftsman, and etcher of
the 17th century, a giant in the history of art. His paintings are characterized
by luxuriant brushwork, rich colour, and a mastery of chiaroscuro. Numerous
portraits and self-portraits exhibit a profound penetration of character.
For most modern observers Rembrandt's art has attained a kind of universal
familiarity and popularity. Yet the biblical scenes and the self-portraits that
today form the hallmark of his art were by no means typical of Dutch pictures of
the 17th century; more commonly, his contemporaries produced landscapes, still
lifes, or genre scenes of daily life that never held great interest for
Rembrandt. In his own era Rembrandt achieved greatest fame as the most
fashionable portrait painter of Amsterdam during the 1630s, but he was
eventually eclipsed even during his own lifetime by younger rivals, including
some of his own students. Another major field of accomplishment lay in the
medium of etching. Rembrandt commanded high prices for his prints even during
his lifetime, and his technical mastery had a lasting effect on printmakers for
centuries.
If any quality typified the works of this great artist, especially in his youth,
that quality would be a personal ambition to rival the dominant artists of
Europe, particularly Peter Paul Rubens from nearby Antwerp. But the tides of
fashion in Holland and Rembrandt's own temperament seem to have frustrated much
of his ambition and left him increasingly isolated and idiosyncratic in his
final years. There is actually a kernel of truth to the apocryphal legend
of Rembrandt's rejection by the leading patrons of Amsterdam, although this loss
of favour was gradual and never total. As a result of his increasing isolation,
however, Rembrandt achieved a particular personal independence that doubtless
contributed to his distinctive and evocative suggestion of the timeless human
world of quiet yet deep emotional states. The silent human figure remained the
central subject of Rembrandt's art and contributed to the sense of a shared
dialogue between viewer and picture, which still is the foundation of
Rembrandt's greatness as well as of his popularity today.
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Early years in Leiden
Rembrandt's youth does not help much to explain either the derivation or the
character of his art. The artist's father, Harmen Gerritszoon van Rijn, was a
miller, a reasonably prosperous man; the family of his mother, Neeltje van
Zuytbroeck, were bakers, but more important, they remained Catholics at a time
when Leiden had adopted the Protestant creed. Indeed, Rembrandt's father was the
only member of his family who became a Calvinist rather than remaining a
Catholic. According to a Leiden chronicle written during the artist's lifetime
(by Jan Orlers, 1641), the young Rembrandt was sent to a Latin school and
directed toward the local university, the very first to have been established in
Holland (1575) and a major centre of learning. But because the young man's
proclivities led toward art, he was apprenticed during the period 1619–22 to the
local painter Jacob Isaacszoon van Swanenburg. Little of the work of van
Swanenburg can be identified today, and his art seems to have left scant
influence on Rembrandt, but the fact that he, too, was a Catholic might have
affected the choice of van Swanenburg as a master. Moreover, van Swanenburg's
father had also been a highly successful painter in Leiden and had trained
Rubens' master, Otto van Veen. Thus, this tutor held out a potential set of
connections for the young Rembrandt.
But Rembrandt's chief training came from the Amsterdam painter Pieter Lastman
(1583–1633), who had spent time in Italy (1603–1606/07) and had returned to
Amsterdam to become the leading painter of biblical, mythological, and
historical pictures. Although Rembrandt seems to have spent only about half a
year with Lastman around 1623, he fully absorbed the lessons of his master. From
Lastman he learned the importance of painting lofty subjects in a broad format
with careful attention to the ancient costumes, dramatic gestures, and
compositional groupings of the full-length figures. The earliest Rembrandt
pictures, including “Stoning of Saint Stephen” (1625), “Palamedes Before
Agamemnon” (1626), and “Baptism of the Eunuch” (1626), clearly derive closely
from both the themes and the pictorial formulas of Lastman. The baptism of the
eunuch, for example, had already been painted by Lastman in a broad format a few
years before (1623; Karlsruhe); Rembrandt's version of the scene from Acts is
transposed into a vertical format, but it retains most of the same figures,
costumes, and accessories, yet condensed into a tighter, more dramatically
lighted mass. Another close comparison of both theme and form is provided by
Lastman's 1622 panel and Rembrandt's denser, vertical 1626 panel of the same
subject, “Balaam's Ass and the Angel.” Recent research links the
“St. Stephen”
and the “Palamedes” with commissions from the young Rembrandt in Leiden by a
local humanist named Petrus Scriverius, whose estate cites two large pictures by
Rembrandt; otherwise the early patrons of these pictures are unknown today.
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The early Rembrandt paintings already reveal the artist's
ambition to rival the leading painters in Europe. Not only did he
concentrate on the most learned and morally serious subjects but he
also strove for the historically plausible settings and costumes
that distinguished the pictures of Lastman and such painters in Rome
as the German émigré Adam Elsheimer. Also evident in these early
paintings are Rembrandt's nascent fascination with dramatic personal
responses and with spotlight effects of light and shadow. If
anything, these elements came to dominate his art in the succeeding
decade. In particular, Rembrandt's exposure to a group of artists
from nearby Utrecht led to an abrupt emulation of their sharply
drawn chiaroscuro, or painting in light and dark. These Utrecht
painters, led by Gerrit van Honthorst, had recently returned from
Rome, and their art enjoyed not only local popularity but also
strong favour in the courts of northern Europe. Hence, when
Rembrandt painted such religious works as “The Presentation in
the Temple” (c. 1627–28) or “Christ at Emmaus”
(1628), he sought to emulate the drama of lighting and gesture of
Elsheimer, Caravaggio, and, now, van Honthorst and to place himself
firmly into the international world of art. A measure of the
self-concept of Rembrandt around this time is the small but dramatic
“Young Painter in the Studio” (c. 1629), which shows a
full-length shadowy figure of an artist situated against the back
wall and dwarfed by a massive panel lying on its easel in the
foreground. This panel, seen from behind, lies in shadow, with only
its near edge glowing with light. The overall effect is one of
heroic confrontation within the very act of creation.
That Rembrandt had attained eminence as an artist by the end of the 1620s can be
discerned from a famous reference, dating from 1629/30, in the autobiography of
Constantijn Huygens, the secretary of the Prince of Orange. Huygens singles out
Rembrandt as well as his young Leiden friend and colleague, Jan Lievens
(1607–74), for special praise in terms of their future promise as artists.
Rembrandt is lauded for his penetration to the essence of his subjects and for
his effects in small format. In particular, the 1629 panel “Judas Returning the
Thirty Pieces of Silver” is held up as a model for moving gesture and emotion,
worthy of the finest works of Italy or even of antiquity. Huygens' chief regret
is that Rembrandt and Lievens never traveled to Italy for further study of the
past masters.
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Only in recent years has Lievens begun to receive attention commensurate with
that paid to Rembrandt, although the careers of the two artists developed in
tandem for many years. Lievens, too, journeyed from Leiden to Amsterdam for a
two-year apprenticeship (1618–19) with Lastman. Indeed, it may well have been the
example of Lievens that led Rembrandt to study with Lastman, and the influence
of Lievens remained essential. Probably through Lievens came the exposure to
Utrecht painting, which was to influence Rembrandt's art. In the late 1620s
Lievens' art so closely resembled Rembrandt's that scholars are still debating
the proper attribution of some panels. For example, Lievens' “Capture of Samson”
(c. 1627–28; Amsterdam) appears to have been the stimulus for Rembrandt's
“Capture of Samson” (1628), and both works emulate the same subject as painted
by Rubens (1610; London) and circulated throughout Europe in prints from an
engraved version. In similar fashion Rembrandt and Lievens maintained a
pictorial dialogue concerning the subject of the raising of Lazarus, beginning
with Rembrandt's c. 1630 panel (Los Angeles), followed by Lievens' 1631 canvas
(Brighton) and etching, and ending with Rembrandt's masterful, dramatic, and
large etching of about 1632. Rembrandt even seems to have predated some of his
works to make them seem earlier than the comparable Lievens compositions. In
1632, however, Lievens departed for England, where he most likely became
acquainted with Anthony Van Dyck, whose art redirected his own and led him to a
later career in Antwerp between 1635 and 1644 before he returned to Amsterdam.
As part of the same ambition to paint historical pictures, both Rembrandt and
Lievens also experimented with studies of heads, or what the Dutch call tronies.
Often these figures wear exotic millinery and receive dramatic poses and lighting,
but they are not portraits. Rather, they seem to have served as possible models
or practice pieces for the character heads to be included within larger
histories. Many of the pictures with the same models that were known in the 19th
century as Rembrandt's “father” or “mother” are actually such studies of heads,
with special attention to the rendition of stuffs, of lighting, and of facial
expressions or features. Many of the early self-portraits also seem to have been
variants of the tronies formula, in which Rembrandt simply used his own features
in lieu of those of another model and dressed himself up in military or
fashionable garb: plumed hats, golden chains, armour gorgets. Some of the heads
of the older models reappear virtually without change on the numerous prophets
and apostles (including the luminous 1630 “Jeremiah”) that Rembrandt produced in
1630–31 in his later years in Leiden; this was a kind of picture that he left
off doing until his final decade in the 1660s.
Rembrandt already enjoyed the attention of pupils and followers during his early
years. His first disciple was Gerrit Dou, who emulated still another category of
pictures from Rembrandt's oeuvre: his genre scenes, or depictions of everyday
activities. Rembrandt had already created such scenes in his 1626 “Music
Lesson,” a work that also features archaic costumes and suggestions of
lustfulness. Dou, also a Leiden native, the son of a glass engraver, became a
pupil of Rembrandt in 1628 and continued this kind of subject but with overtones
of seriousness and moral instruction and with an enamel-like fineness on a minute
scale that was highly prized by collectors.
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Music Lesson
1626
Oil on wood
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam
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Having attracted the attention of the influential Huygens at court in The Hague,
Rembrandt made inroads with the ruling House of Orange, chiefly with Prince
Frederick Henry, for whom he painted in 1632–33 two scenes of Christ's Passion,
the “Raising of the Cross” and the “Descent from the Cross”
(both in Munich) as
well as a portrait of the princess Amalia van Solms that was to have been the
pendant of a van Honthorst portrait of Frederick Henry. The Passion scenes were
ordered for the Prince by Huygens and are closely linked to the model of Rubens,
again known to Rembrandt chiefly through an engraving. At the time Rubens was
the leading artistic force in Europe, and as a cultivated diplomat as well as a
consummate painter he was especially favoured at princely courts. Thus, to
emulate Rubens' “Descent from the Cross” for his own princely patron was for
Rembrandt the highest act of artistic self-assertion. Rembrandt even went so far
as to produce his own 1633 etching of his picture in emulation of Rubens. One
striking feature about both of Rembrandt's Passion scenes is that the artist
gave his own features to participants within the scene; in the “Raising of the
Cross” he even employed modern dress and a focused light to underscore this
personal involvement, meant perhaps to express his own meditative spirituality.
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The letters from Rembrandt to Huygens concerning the Passion series survive, and
they document a second phase of artistic production between 1636 and 1639, when
three more pictures were made for Frederick Henry. The letters document the
progressive disenchantment with Rembrandt by Huygens and the Prince, but one of
them also contains a rare personal testimonial from Rembrandt concerning his
artistic aims. The letter underscores the artist's commitment to evoking “the
greatest and most natural emotion” for his religious subjects. In this respect
he is close to Rubens, who also was dedicated to the evocation of energy, drama,
and emotion. Rembrandt's works in comparison present less of the heroism and
beauty of Rubens' scenes but emphasize instead dramatic nocturnal lighting,
humble figures, and intimate, lifelike reactions of his religious actors. These
were basically the same elements that Huygens had already singled out for praise
in Rembrandt's earlier pictures, and they continued to inform his religious art
during the 1630s.
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Esther Preparing to Intercede with Ahasuerus
1633
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Early years in Amsterdam
Rembrandt moved to Amsterdam in late 1631. He already had a dealer in that city,
Hendrick Uylenburgh, and his prospects at court were eclipsed by the domination
of van Honthorst. Thus, the prosperity of Amsterdam, a capital of capitalism and
a virtual city-state, drew him inexorably. In part through his introductions
from Uylenburgh, Rembrandtquickly became one of the most fashionable and
well-paid portraitists in Amsterdam. He was able to impress the regents of his
adopted city, that clan of mercantile patricians who formed the centre of
political power and influence. A mark of Rembrandt's early success was his
commission to paint “Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp” (1632), a
commemoration of the annual anatomic demonstration to the city's guild of
surgeons by its praelector, or chief surgeon. This large-scale group portrait by
Rembrandt has been justly celebrated ever since for its departure from the rule
of showing a coordinated row of portrait heads. In contrast Rembrandt animated
his subjects through a pyramidal composition and his mastery of dramatic
lighting to focus attention on the actual process of the lecture itself. At the
same time he enlivened the faces of the listeners with a rich variety of
expressions of attention, investing them with the same suggestive pictorial
psychology that would remain his trademark. Many of the same features can be
found in Rembrandt's portraits of individuals or of husbands and wives painted
shortly after his arrival in Amsterdam. Although Rembrandt had painted very few
portraits while at Leiden, his first four years in Amsterdam brought him some 50
portrait commissions, most of them quite well paid. Inasmuch as Nicolaes Tulp
was not only a surgeon but also an alderman and a member of the Amsterdam town
council, he was an influential man within the regents' group. Also popular with
the regents was Uylenburgh, the art dealer with whom Rembrandt lived briefly and
also entered into commercial partnership. Many of Rembrandt's portrait sitters
(e.g., Marten Looten, 1632) appear to have been Mennonites, religious
conservatives, whom he met through Uylenburgh and who were well connected with
the Amsterdam regents.
Rembrandt also portrayed a number of religious leaders of Holland during his
first decade in Amsterdam: the Remonstrant Johannes Uytenbogaert (1633 panel and
1635 etching), the Calvinist Johannes Elison (1634), and the Mennonite Cornelis
Anslo (1641 double portrait panel and etching). This last figure was a renowned
preacher, and Rembrandt's portrayal emphasizes Mennonite reliance on the spoken
word. In general his renditions take up the traditional challenge to the
pictorial arts to render life without the aid of the spoken or the written word,
as if in response to the challenge written in verse by the greatest of
17th-century Dutch poets, Joost van den Vondel:
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That's right, Rembrandt, paint Cornelis's voice!
His visible self is second
choice.
The invisible can only be known through the word.
For Anslo to be seen,
he must be heard.
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Yet, in addition to these portraits and the numerous pendant pairs of portraits
during these early Amsterdam years, Rembrandt also clearly yearned for
recognition, after the model of Rubens, as a painter of both mythologies and
biblical stories. About the time of his move from Leiden, he produced his most
extensive group of mythologies, beginning with “Andromeda” (c. 1630), which
stresses the pathos rather than either the beauty or the heroism of the nude
victim. A large “Pluto and Proserpina” (c. 1632) was clearly made for Frederick
Henry at the same time as the Passion pictures, and both its scale and its
frenetic energy attest to its relationship to the idiom of Rubens, although
there fined execution still harks back to the Leiden of Dou. More typical,
however, of Rembrandt's tendency to demythologize is the way he renders such
subjects as “Rapeof Europa” (c. 1632) or “Rape of Ganymede” (1635). The former
places a seraglio of exotically clad, small-scale women in front of a shoreline
that includes a Dutch harbour scene. The latter scene is even more prosaic,
showing a mewling toddler instead of the seductively beauteous youth of legend.
Not only is the eagle elevating the child upward against a leaden-gray sky but
also the frightened boy urinates reflexively in his horror. The artist seems
almost to have taken pains to violate conventions of beauty and decorum in such
a work, as if to engage in persiflage rather than homage to the classical
heritage. Scholars still debate whether this work holds Neoplatonic significance
as a mythic analogue to the union of the Christian soul with the divine or
whether its irreverence lies closer to the homophilic traditions of the subject.
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Rape of Ganymede
1635
Oil on canvas, 171 x 130 cm
Gemaldegalerie, Dresden
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