Как пишется фамилия рембрандт

Подробная информация о фамилии Рембрандт, а именно ее происхождение, история образования, суть фамилии, значение, перевод и склонение. Какая история происхождения фамилии Рембрандт? Откуда родом фамилия Рембрандт? Какой национальности человек с фамилией Рембрандт? Как правильно пишется фамилия Рембрандт? Верный перевод фамилии Рембрандт на английский язык и склонение по падежам. Полную характеристику фамилии Рембрандт и ее суть вы можете прочитать онлайн в этой статье совершенно бесплатно без регистрации.

Происхождение фамилии Рембрандт

Большинство фамилий, в том числе и фамилия Рембрандт, произошло от отчеств (по крестильному или мирскому имени одного из предков), прозвищ (по роду деятельности, месту происхождения или какой-то другой особенности предка) или других родовых имён.

История фамилии Рембрандт

В различных общественных слоях фамилии появились в разное время. История фамилии Рембрандт насчитывает долгую историю. Впервые фамилия Рембрандт встречается в летописях духовенства с середины XVIII века. Обычно они образовались от названий приходов и церквей или имени отца. Некоторые священнослужители приобретали фамилии при выпуске из семинарии, при этом лучшим ученикам давались фамилии наиболее благозвучные и несшие сугубо положительный смысл, как например Рембрандт. Фамилия Рембрандт наследуется из поколения в поколение по мужской линии (или по женской).

Суть фамилии Рембрандт по буквам

Фамилия Рембрандт состоит из 9 букв. Фамилии из девяти букв – признак склонности к «экономии энергии» или, проще говоря – к лени. Таким людям больше всего подходит образ жизни кошки или кота. Чтобы «ни забот, ни хлопот», только возможность нежить свое тело, когда и сколько хочется, а так же наличие полной уверенности в том, что для удовлетворения насущных потребностей не придется делать «лишних движений». Проанализировав значение каждой буквы в фамилии Рембрандт можно понять ее суть и скрытое значение.

Р — противостоят воздействию извне, уверены в себе, храбрые, увлечённые личности. Способны к неоправданному риску, авантюрные натуры склонны к непререкаемым суждениям. Умение рисковать ради цели. Желание и потенциал для лидерства.

Е — самовыражение, стремление к обмену опытом. Выступают в роли посредника в конфликтах. Проницательны, понимают мир тайн. Болтливы. Сильная любовь к путешествиям, в жизни такие могут часто менять место жительства, непоседливы.

М — застенчивы, любят помогать окружающим, не приемлют варварского отношения к природе, борьба с жаждой стать «центром вселенной». Стремление во всем находить рациональное объяснение. Упрямство под маской благодушия и даже внутренняя жесткость.

Б — признак душевного романтизма, постоянные и надёжные люди. Способность изъявлять инициативу, легко преодолевать трудности. Желание достичь материального благополучия.

Р — противостоят воздействию извне, уверены в себе, храбрые, увлечённые личности. Способны к неоправданному риску, авантюрные натуры склонны к непререкаемым суждениям. Умение рисковать ради цели. Желание и потенциал для лидерства.

А — самая сильная и яркая буква кириллицы. Личности, обладающие такими буквами в фамилии, всегда стремятся к лидерству. Нередко они соревнуются с самим собой. Указывает на желание что-то изменить, достичь наивысшего уровня комфорта в физическом проявлении и в духовном.

Н — знак неприятия действительности такой, какая она есть; желание достичь духовного и физического здоровья. В работе проявляется усердие. Нелюбовь к труду, не вызывающего интереса. Наличие критического ума и категорическое неприятие рутинной работы. Неумение расслабляться в обществе, постоянная напряженность и сомнения.

Д — приступая к работе, хорошо обдумывают последовательность. Основной ориентир — семья. Занимаются благотворительностью. Капризны. Имеют скрытые экстрасенсорные способности. «Работа на публику», нежелание внутреннего развития, основной акцент люди, имеющие в имени такую букву, делают на кратковременном положительном впечатлении со стороны общественности.

Т — творческие, чувствительные люди; обладают высокой интуицией, находятся в постоянном поиске правды. Часто желания не совпадают с возможностями. Стремятся сделать все быстро, не откладывая на завтра. Требовательность к окружающим и к себе. Стремление к поиску истины. Переоценка своих возможностей.

Значение фамилии Рембрандт

Фамилия является основным элементом, связывающим человека со вселенной и окружающим миром. Она определяет его судьбу, основные черты характера и наиболее значимые события. Внутри фамилии Рембрандт скрывается опыт, накопленный предыдущими поколениями и предками. По нумерологии фамилии Рембрандт можно определить жизненный путь рода, семейное благополучие, достоинства, недостатки и характер носителя фамилии. Число фамилии Рембрандт в нумерологии — 9. Представители фамилии Рембрандт — это серьезные люди с ярко выраженными лидерскими качествами. С раннего детства они устанавливают определенную цель и добиваются ее осуществления. Носители фамилии с цифрой девять не терпят контроля и необходимости подчиняться: чаще всего они стараются добиться руководящего положения.

Жизненный путь рода и фамилии Рембрандт.
Высшие силы приготовили для фамилии Рембрандт немалое количество испытаний. Прежде, чем превратиться в яркий бриллиант, им потребуется пройти огонь, воду и медные трубы. Каждый прожитый год – это череда проблем, подводных камней и сложностей. Судьба словно испытывает решимость человека с фамилией Рембрандт и постепенно усиливает свое давление.
Как только заканчивается одна сложность, ее место тут же занимает новая проблема. Если человек с фамилией Рембрандт проявит стойкость, ее ожидает головокружительная карьера, признание со стороны коллег и место в высшем обществе.
Это прирожденные лидеры, способные увлекать посторонних людей своими идеями и решительностью. Это талантливые руководители, умеющие раскрывать скрытый потенциал и превращать не ограненный алмаз в настоящие бриллианты.

Семейная жизнь с фамилией Рембрандт.
Желание быть первым проецируется и на семейную жизнь людей с фамилией Рембрандт. Они всегда выступают в качестве главы семьи, намечают планы, сроки и способы их выполнения. За носителем фамилии Рембрандт всегда остается последнее слово: как в принятии решений, так и в обычной семейной ссоре. При этом они обожают свою половину и искренне признаются ей в любви.
Детей воспитывают достаточно строго и прививают навыки самостоятельно. Не терпят физического насилия, а потому порку ремнем заменяют внушительной лекцией. Это настоящие добытчики, способные обеспечить потребности каждого члена семьи. На себе девятки также не экономят, а потому с радостью покупают красивую одежду и стильные аксессуары.

Рекомендуемые профессии для фамилии Рембрандт.
Для фамилии Рембрандт рекомендуются руководящие должности: директор предприятия, руководитель отдела, заместитель директора по производству. Благодаря врожденной интуиции, они способны разглядеть в человеке сильные и слабые стороны. Носители фамилии Рембрандт – отличные специалисты по кадрам, умеющие формировать сильную команду. Они часто увлекаются медициной и добиваются в этой сфере значительных успехов. Представители фамилии Рембрандт хорошо справляются с функциями банкира, могут выступать в роли главного бухгалтера или ведущего экономиста.

Достоинства характера человека с фамилией Рембрандт.
Главные качества в фамилиии Рембрандт: целеустремленность, стремление к лидерству, стойкость к проблемам. Так же к достоинствам относится честность, принципиальность и открытость. Это верные друзья, преданные соратники и надежные коллеги.

Как правильно пишется фамилия Рембрандт

В русском языке грамотным написанием этой фамилии является — Рембрандт. В английском языке фамилия Рембрандт может иметь следующий вариант написания — Rembrandt.

Склонение фамилии Рембрандт по падежам

Падеж	Вопрос	Фамилия
Именительный	Кто?	Рембрандт
Родительный	Нет Кого?	Рембрандт
Дательный	Рад Кому?	Рембрандт
Винительный	Вижу Кого?	Рембрандт
Творительный	Доволен Кем?	Рембрандт
Предложный	Думаю О ком?	Рембрандт

Видео про фамилию Рембрандт

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Rembrandt
Rembrandt as depicted in his 1659 Self-Portrait with Beret and Turned-Up Collar (now housed in the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.)
Born	Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn 15 July 1606[1] Leiden, Dutch Republic
Died	4 October 1669 (aged 63) Amsterdam, Dutch Republic
Education	Jacob van Swanenburg Pieter Lastman
Known for	Painting, printmaking, drawing
Notable work	Self-portraits The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp (1632) Belshazzar’s Feast (1635) The Night Watch (1642) Bathsheba at Her Bath (1654) Syndics of the Drapers’ Guild (1662) The Hundred Guilder Print (etching, c. 1647–1649)
Movement	Dutch Golden Age Baroque

Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn (,^[2] Dutch: [ˈrɛmbrɑnt ˈɦɑrmə(n)ˌsoːɱ vɑn ˈrɛin] (listen); 15 July 1606^[1] – 4 October 1669), usually simply known as Rembrandt, was a Dutch Golden Age painter, printmaker and draughtsman. An innovative and prolific master in three media,^[3] he is generally considered one of the greatest visual artists in the history of art and the most important in Dutch art history.^[4] It is estimated Rembrandt produced a total of about three hundred paintings, three hundred etchings and two thousand drawings.

Unlike most Dutch masters of the 17th century, Rembrandt’s works depict a wide range of styles and subject matter, from portraits and self-portraits to landscapes, genre scenes, allegorical and historical scenes, biblical and mythological themes and animal studies. His contributions to art came in a period of great wealth and cultural achievement that historians call the Dutch Golden Age, when Dutch art (especially Dutch painting), whilst antithetical to the Baroque style that dominated Europe, was prolific and innovative. This era gave rise to important new genres. Like many artists of the Dutch Golden Age, such as Jan Vermeer, Rembrandt was an avid art collector and dealer.

Rembrandt never went abroad but was considerably influenced by the work of the Italian masters and Netherlandish artists who had studied in Italy, like Pieter Lastman, the Utrecht Caravaggists, Flemish Baroque, and Peter Paul Rubens. After he achieved youthful success as a portrait painter, Rembrandt’s later years were marked by personal tragedy and financial hardships. Yet his etchings and paintings were popular throughout his lifetime, his reputation as an artist remained high,^[5] and for twenty years he taught many important Dutch painters.^[6]

Rembrandt’s portraits of his contemporaries, self-portraits and illustrations of scenes from the Bible are regarded as his greatest creative triumphs. His self-portraits form an intimate autobiography.^[4] Rembrandt’s foremost contribution in the history of printmaking was his transformation of the etching process from a relatively new reproductive technique into an art form.^[7][8] His reputation as the greatest etcher in the history of the medium was established in his lifetime. Few of his paintings left the Dutch Republic while he lived but his prints were circulated throughout Europe, and his wider reputation was initially based on them alone.

In his works, he exhibited knowledge of classical iconography. A depiction of a biblical scene was informed by Rembrandt’s knowledge of the specific text, his assimilation of classical composition, and his observations of Amsterdam’s Jewish population.^[9] Because of his empathy for the human condition, he has been called «one of the great prophets of civilization».^[10] The French sculptor Auguste Rodin said, «Compare me with Rembrandt! What sacrilege! With Rembrandt, the colossus of Art! We should prostrate ourselves before Rembrandt and never compare anyone with him!»^[11]

Early life and education[edit]

Rembrandt^[a] Harmenszoon van Rijn was born on 15 July 1606 in Leiden,^[1] in the Dutch Republic, now the Netherlands. He was the ninth child born to Harmen Gerritszoon van Rijn and Neeltgen Willemsdochter van Zuijtbrouck.^[13] His family was quite well-to-do; his father was a miller and his mother was a baker’s daughter. Religion is a central theme in Rembrandt’s works and the religiously fraught period in which he lived makes his faith a matter of interest. His mother was Catholic, and his father belonged to the Dutch Reformed Church. While his work reveals deep Christian faith, there is no evidence that Rembrandt formally belonged to any church. Five of his children were christened in Dutch Reformed churches in Amsterdam: four in the Oude Kerk (Old Church) and one, Titus, in the Zuiderkerk (Southern Church).^[14]

As a boy, he attended a Latin school. At the age of 13, he was enrolled at the University of Leiden, although according to a contemporary he had a greater inclination towards painting; he was soon apprenticed to a Leiden history painter, Jacob van Swanenburg, with whom he spent three years.^[15] After a brief but important apprenticeship of six months with the painter Pieter Lastman in Amsterdam, Rembrandt stayed a few months with Jacob Pynas and then started his own workshop, though Simon van Leeuwen claimed that Joris van Schooten taught Rembrandt in Leiden.^[15][16] Unlike many of his contemporaries who traveled to Italy as part of their artistic training, Rembrandt never left the Dutch Republic during his lifetime.^[17][18]

Career[edit]

In 1624 or 1625, Rembrandt opened a studio in Leiden, which he shared with friend and colleague Jan Lievens. In 1627, Rembrandt began to accept students, which included Gerrit Dou in 1628.^[19]
In 1629, Rembrandt was discovered by the statesman Constantijn Huygens who procured for Rembrandt important commissions from the court of The Hague. As a result of this connection, Prince Frederik Hendrik continued to purchase paintings from Rembrandt until 1646.^[20]

At the end of 1631, Rembrandt moved to Amsterdam, a city rapidly expanding as the business and trade capital. He began to practice as a professional portraitist for the first time, with great success. He initially stayed with an art dealer, Hendrick van Uylenburgh, and in 1634, married Hendrick’s cousin, Saskia van Uylenburgh.^[21][22] Saskia came from a respected family: her father Rombertus van Uylenburgh had been a lawyer and a burgomaster (mayor) of Leeuwarden. The couple married in the local church of St. Annaparochie without the presence of Rembrandt’s relatives.^[23] In the same year, Rembrandt became a citizen of Amsterdam and a member of the local guild of painters. He also acquired a number of students, among them Ferdinand Bol and Govert Flinck.^[24]

In 1635, Rembrandt and Saskia rented a fashionable lodging with a view of the river.^[25] In 1639 they moved to a large and recently modernized house in the upscale ‘Breestraat’ with artists and art dealers; Nicolaes Pickenoy was his neighbor.
The mortgage to finance the 13,000 guilder purchase would be a cause for later financial difficulties.^[b][24] The neighborhood sheltered many immigrants and was becoming the Jewish quarter. It was there that Rembrandt frequently sought his Jewish neighbors to model for his Old Testament scenes.^[28]

Although they were by now affluent, the couple suffered several personal setbacks; their son Rumbartus died two months after his birth in 1635 and their daughter Cornelia died at just three weeks of age in 1638. In 1640, they had a second daughter, also named Cornelia, who died after living barely over a month. Only their fourth child, Titus, who was born in 1641, survived into adulthood. Saskia died in 1642, probably from tuberculosis. Rembrandt’s drawings of her on her sick and death bed are among his most moving works.^[29][30]

During Saskia’s illness, Geertje Dircx was hired as Titus’ caretaker and dry nurse; at some time she also became Rembrandt’s lover. In 1649 she left and charged Rembrandt with breach of promise (a euphemism for seduction under [breached] promise to marry) and be awarded alimony.^[24] Rembrandt tried to settle the matter amicably but she pawned the ring he had given her that once belonged to Saskia to maintain her livelihood. The court particularly stated that Rembrandt had to pay a maintenance allowance, provided that Titus remained her only heir and she sold none of Rembrandt’s possessions.^[31] In 1650 Rembrandt paid for her trip to have her committed to an asylum or poorhouse at Gouda.^[32] Five years later he didn’t support her release. In August 1656 Geertje was listed as one of Rembrandt’s seven major creditors.

In early 1649 Rembrandt began a relationship with the much younger Hendrickje Stoffels, who had initially been his maid. She may have been the cause that Geertje left. In July 1654 she was pregnant, and received a summons from the Reformed Church to answer the charge «that she had committed the acts of a whore with Rembrandt the painter». She admitted and was banned from receiving communion. Rembrandt was not summoned to appear for the Church council; he seems not to have been a (very active) member.^[33] In October they had a daughter, Cornelia but Rembrandt had not married Hendrickje. Had he remarried he would have lost access to a trust set up for Titus in Saskia’s will.^[29]

Insolvency[edit]

Rembrandt lived beyond his means, buying art, prints and rarities. In January 1653 the sale of the property formally closed but Rembrandt still had to pay half of the mortgage. The creditors began to insist on installments but Rembrandt refused and asked for a postponement. The house needed carpentry work and Rembrandt borrowed money from Jan Six among others.^[34] In 1655 the 14-years-old Titus made a will, making his father sole heir, shutting out his mother’s family.^[35] After a notorious year with plague, (art) business dropped and Rembrandt applied for a high court arrangement (cessio bonorum). In 1656 he declared his insolvency, taking stock and voluntarily surrendered his goods.^[36] Meanwhile, he had donated the house to his son.^[37] The authorities and his creditors were generally accommodating to him, giving him plenty of time to pay his debts. In November 1657 an auction was organized to sell his paintings and a large number of etching plates, drawings (some by Raphael, Mantegna and Giorgione).^[c] Rembrandt was allowed to keep all his tools including his etching press as a mean of income.^[38]

The sale list with 363 items gives a good insight into Rembrandt’s collections, which, apart from Old Master paintings and drawings, included statues and busts of the Roman emperors and Greek philosophers, books (a bible), armor (helmets, bows and arrows), porcelain, among many objects from Asia, a collections of natural history (two lion skins, a bird-of-paradise), and minerals.^[39] The prices realized in the sale were disappointing.^[40] In February 1658 Rembrandt’ house was sold at a (foreclosure) auction and the family quickly moved to more modest accommodation at Rozengracht;^[41] Hendrickje complained at the authorities as she left an oak cupboard.^[42] Early December 1660 the sale of the house was closed but the money went to Titus’ guardian.^[43] Two weeks later Hendrickje and Titus set up a dummy corporation as art dealers, so Rembrandt, who had board and lodging, could continue to produce.^[44][45]

In 1661, the new business was contracted to complete work for the newly built city hall. The resulting work, The Conspiracy of Claudius Civilis, was rejected by the mayors and returned to the painter within a few weeks; the surviving fragment (in Stockholm) is only a quarter of the original work.^[46] In 1662 he was still fulfilling major commissions for portraits and finished the Staalmeesters.^[47] Around this time Rembrandt took on his last apprentice, Aert de Gelder. It is problematic how wealthy Rembrandt was and he overestimated the value of his art collection.^[48] Anyhow, half was earmarked for Titus’ inheritance.^[49]

In March 1663 Hendrickje was sick and Titus was allowed to act. Isaac van Hertsbeeck, Rembrandt’s main creditor, went to the High Court to contest that Titus had to be paid first.^[50] He lost more than once and had to pay the money he had already received to Titus in 1665 who was by then declared of age.^[51][52] Rembrandt was working on the Jewish Bride and his three final self-portraits but fell into rent arrears.^[53] Cosimo III de’ Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany visited Rembrandt twice and travelled back to Florence with one of the self-portraits.^[54]

Rembrandt outlived both Hendrickje and Titus, who died in September 1668, leaving a pregnant widow behind. Rembrandt died on Friday 4 October 1669; he was buried four days later in a rented grave in the Westerkerk. Supposedly as a rich man as the heirs paid in burial taxes a substantial amount of money, f 15.^[55] Cornelia (1654-1684), his illegitimate child, moved to Batavia in 1670 with an obscure painter and the inheritance of her mother.^[56] His only grandchild, Titia (1669-1715), inherited a considerable sum from Titus.^[57] According to Bob Wessels: With more than 20 legal conflicts and disputes, in all areas of life and business, Rembrandt also led a turbulent legal and financial life.^[58]

Works[edit]

In a letter to Huygens, Rembrandt offered the only surviving explanation of what he sought to achieve through his art, writing that, «the greatest and most natural movement», translated from de meeste en de natuurlijkste beweegelijkheid. The word «beweegelijkheid» translates to «emotion» or «motive». Whether this refers to objectives, material, or something else, is not known but critics have drawn particular attention to the way Rembrandt seamlessly melded the earthly and spiritual.^[59]

Earlier 20th century connoisseurs claimed Rembrandt had produced well over 600 paintings,^[60] nearly 400 etchings and 2,000 drawings.^[61] More recent scholarship, from the 1960s to the present day (led by the Rembrandt Research Project), often controversially, has winnowed his oeuvre to nearer 300 paintings.^[d] His prints, traditionally all called etchings, although many are produced in whole or part by engraving and sometimes drypoint, have a much more stable total of slightly under 300.^[e] It is likely Rembrandt made many more drawings in his lifetime than 2,000 but those extant are more rare than presumed.^[f] Two experts claim that the number of drawings whose autograph status can be regarded as effectively «certain» is no higher than about 75, although this is disputed. The list was to be unveiled at a scholarly meeting in February 2010.^[64]

At one time, approximately 90 paintings were counted as Rembrandt self-portraits but it is now known that he had his students copy his own self-portraits as part of their training. Modern scholarship has reduced the autograph count to over forty paintings, as well as a few drawings and thirty-one etchings, which include many of the most remarkable images of the group.^[65] Some show him posing in quasi-historical fancy dress, or pulling faces at himself. His oil paintings trace the progress from an uncertain young man, through the dapper and very successful portrait-painter of the 1630s, to the troubled but massively powerful portraits of his old age. Together they give a remarkably clear picture of the man, his appearance and his psychological make-up, as revealed by his richly weathered face.^[g]

In his portraits and self-portraits, he angles the sitter’s face in such a way that the ridge of the nose nearly always forms the line of demarcation between brightly illuminated and shadowy areas. A Rembrandt face is a face partially eclipsed; and the nose, bright and obvious, thrusting into the riddle of halftones, serves to focus the viewer’s attention upon, and to dramatize, the division between a flood of light—an overwhelming clarity—and a brooding duskiness.^[66]

In a number of biblical works, including The Raising of the Cross, Joseph Telling His Dreams, and The Stoning of Saint Stephen, Rembrandt painted himself as a character in the crowd. Durham suggests that this was because the Bible was for Rembrandt «a kind of diary, an account of moments in his own life».^[67]

Among the more prominent characteristics of Rembrandt’s work are his use of chiaroscuro, the theatrical employment of light and shadow derived from Caravaggio, or, more likely, from the Dutch Caravaggisti but adapted for very personal means.^[68] Also notable are his dramatic and lively presentation of subjects, devoid of the rigid formality that his contemporaries often displayed, and a deeply felt compassion for mankind, irrespective of wealth and age. His immediate family—his wife Saskia, his son Titus and his common-law wife Hendrickje—often figured prominently in his paintings, many of which had mythical, biblical or historical themes.

Periods, themes and styles[edit]

Throughout his career, Rembrandt took as his primary subjects the themes of portraiture, landscape and narrative painting. For the last, he was especially praised by his contemporaries, who extolled him as a masterly interpreter of biblical stories for his skill in representing emotions and attention to detail.^[71] Stylistically, his paintings progressed from the early «smooth» manner, characterized by fine technique in the portrayal of illusionistic form, to the late «rough» treatment of richly variegated paint surfaces, which allowed for an illusionism of form suggested by the tactile quality of the paint itself.^[72]

A parallel development may be seen in Rembrandt’s skill as a printmaker. In the etchings of his maturity, particularly from the late 1640s onward, the freedom and breadth of his drawings and paintings found expression in the print medium as well. The works encompass a wide range of subject matter and technique, sometimes leaving large areas of white paper to suggest space, at other times employing complex webs of line to produce rich dark tones.^[73]

Lastman’s influence on Rembrandt was most prominent during his period in Leiden from 1625 to 1631.^[74] Paintings were rather small but rich in details (for example, in costumes and jewelry). Religious and allegorical themes were favored, as were tronies.^[74] In 1626 Rembrandt produced his first etchings, the wide dissemination of which would largely account for his international fame.^[74] In 1629 he completed Judas Repentant, Returning the Pieces of Silver and The Artist in His Studio, works that evidence his interest in the handling of light and variety of paint application, and constitute the first major progress in his development as a painter.^[75]

During his early years in Amsterdam (1632–1636), Rembrandt began to paint dramatic biblical and mythological scenes in high contrast and of large format (The Blinding of Samson, 1636, Belshazzar’s Feast, c. 1635 Danaë, 1636 but reworked later), seeking to emulate the baroque style of Rubens.^[76] With the occasional help of assistants in Uylenburgh’s workshop, he painted numerous portrait commissions both small (Jacob de Gheyn III) and large (Portrait of the Shipbuilder Jan Rijcksen and his Wife, 1633, Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp, 1632).^[77]

By the late 1630s, Rembrandt had produced a few paintings and many etchings of landscapes. Often these landscapes highlighted natural drama, featuring uprooted trees and ominous skies (Cottages before a Stormy Sky, c. 1641; The Three Trees, 1643). From 1640 his work became less exuberant and more sober in tone, possibly reflecting personal tragedy. Biblical scenes were now derived more often from the New Testament than the Old Testament, as had been the case before. In 1642 he painted The Night Watch, the most substantial of the important group portrait commissions which he received in this period, and through which he sought to find solutions to compositional and narrative problems that had been attempted in previous works.^[78]

In the decade following the Night Watch, Rembrandt’s paintings varied greatly in size, subject, and style. The previous tendency to create dramatic effects primarily by strong contrasts of light and shadow gave way to the use of frontal lighting and larger and more saturated areas of color. Simultaneously, figures came to be placed parallel to the picture plane. These changes can be seen as a move toward a classical mode of composition and, considering the more expressive use of brushwork as well, may indicate a familiarity with Venetian art (Susanna and the Elders, 1637–47).^[79]
At the same time, there was a marked decrease in painted works in favor of etchings and drawings of landscapes.^[80] In these graphic works natural drama eventually made way for quiet Dutch rural scenes.

In the 1650s, Rembrandt’s style changed again. Colors became richer and brush strokes more pronounced. With these changes, Rembrandt distanced himself from earlier work and current fashion, which increasingly inclined toward fine, detailed works. His use of light becomes more jagged and harsh, and shine becomes almost nonexistent. His singular approach to paint application may have been suggested in part by familiarity with the work of Titian, and could be seen in the context of the then current discussion of ‘finish’ and surface quality of paintings. Contemporary accounts sometimes remark disapprovingly of the coarseness of Rembrandt’s brushwork, and the artist himself was said to have dissuaded visitors from looking too closely at his paintings.^[81] The tactile manipulation of paint may hearken to medieval procedures, when mimetic effects of rendering informed a painting’s surface. The result is a richly varied handling of paint, deeply layered and often apparently haphazard, which suggests form and space in both an illusory and highly individual manner.^[82]

In later years, biblical themes were often depicted but emphasis shifted from dramatic group scenes to intimate portrait-like figures (James the Apostle, 1661). In his last years, Rembrandt painted his most deeply reflective self-portraits (from 1652 to 1669 he painted fifteen), and several moving images of both men and women (The Jewish Bride, c. 1666)—in love, in life, and before God.^[83][84]

Graphic works[edit]

Rembrandt produced etchings for most of his career, from 1626 to 1660, when he was forced to sell his printing-press and practically abandoned etching. Only the troubled year of 1649 produced no dated work.^[85] He took easily to etching and, though he learned to use a burin and partly engraved many plates, the freedom of etching technique was fundamental to his work. He was very closely involved in the whole process of printmaking, and must have printed at least early examples of his etchings himself. At first he used a style based on drawing but soon moved to one based on painting, using a mass of lines and numerous bitings with the acid to achieve different strengths of line. Towards the end of the 1630s, he reacted against this manner and moved to a simpler style, with fewer bitings.^[86] He worked on the so-called Hundred Guilder Print in stages throughout the 1640s, and it was the «critical work in the middle of his career», from which his final etching style began to emerge.^[87]
Although the print only survives in two states, the first very rare, evidence of much reworking can be seen underneath the final print and many drawings survive for elements of it.^[88]

In the mature works of the 1650s, Rembrandt was more ready to improvise on the plate and large prints typically survive in several states, up to eleven, often radically changed. He now used hatching to create his dark areas, which often take up much of the plate. He also experimented with the effects of printing on different kinds of paper, including Japanese paper, which he used frequently, and on vellum. He began to use «surface tone,» leaving a thin film of ink on parts of the plate instead of wiping it completely clean to print each impression. He made more use of drypoint, exploiting, especially in landscapes, the rich fuzzy burr that this technique gives to the first few impressions.^[89]

His prints have similar subjects to his paintings, although the 27 self-portraits are relatively more common, and portraits of other people less so. There are forty-six landscapes, mostly small, which largely set the course for the graphic treatment of landscape until the end of the 19th century. One third of his etchings are of religious subjects, many treated with a homely simplicity, whilst others are his most monumental prints. A few erotic, or just obscene, compositions have no equivalent in his paintings.^[90] He owned, until forced to sell it, a magnificent collection of prints by other artists, and many borrowings and influences in his work can be traced to artists as diverse as Mantegna, Raphael, Hercules Seghers, and Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione.

Drawings by Rembrandt and his pupils/followers have been extensively studied by many artists and scholars^[h] through the centuries. His original draughtsmanship has been described as an individualistic art style that was very similar to East Asian old masters, most notably Chinese masters:^[97] a «combination of formal clarity and calligraphic vitality in the movement of pen or brush that is closer to Chinese painting in technique and feeling than to anything in European art before the twentieth century».^[98]

Asian inspiration[edit]

Rembrandt was interested in Mughal miniatures, especially around the 1650s. He drew versions of some 23 Mughal paintings, and may have owned an album of them. These miniatures include paintings of Shah Jahan, Akbar, Jahangir and Dara Shikoh and may have influenced the costumes and other aspects of his works.^{[99][100][101][102]}

The Night Watch[edit]

Rembrandt painted The Militia Company of Captain Frans Banning Cocq between 1640 and 1642, which became his most famous work.^[103] This picture was called De Nachtwacht by the Dutch and The Night Watch by Sir Joshua Reynolds because by 1781 the picture was so dimmed and defaced that it was almost indistinguishable, and it looked quite like a night scene. After it was cleaned, it was discovered to represent broad day—a party of 18 musketeers stepping from a gloomy courtyard into the blinding sunlight. For Théophile Thoré it was the prettiest painting in the world.

The piece was commissioned for the new hall of the Kloveniersdoelen, the musketeer branch of the civic militia. Rembrandt departed from convention, which ordered that such genre pieces should be stately and formal, rather a line-up than an action scene. Instead he showed the militia readying themselves to embark on a mission, though the exact nature of the mission or event is a matter of ongoing debate.

Contrary to what is often said, the work was hailed as a success from the beginning. Parts of the canvas were cut off (approximately 20% from the left hand side was removed) to make the painting fit its new position when it was moved to Amsterdam town hall in 1715. In 1817 this large painting was moved to the Trippenhuis. Since 1885 the painting is on display at the Rijksmuseum.^[i] In 1940 the painting was moved to Kasteel Radboud; in 1941 to a bunker near Heemskerk; in 1942 to St Pietersberg; in June 1945 it was shipped back to Amsterdam.

Expert assessments[edit]

In 1968, the Rembrandt Research Project began under the sponsorship of the Netherlands Organization for the Advancement of Scientific Research; it was initially expected to last a highly optimistic ten years. Art historians teamed up with experts from other fields to reassess the authenticity of works attributed to Rembrandt, using all methods available, including state-of-the-art technical diagnostics, and to compile a complete new catalogue raisonné of his paintings. As a result of their findings, many paintings that were previously attributed to Rembrandt have been removed from their list, although others have been added back.^[105] Many of those removed are now thought to be the work of his students.

One example of activity is The Polish Rider, now housed in the Frick Collection in New York City. Rembrandt’s authorship had been questioned by at least one scholar, Alfred von Wurzbach, at the beginning of the twentieth century but for many decades later most scholars, including the foremost authority writing in English, Julius S. Held, agreed that it was indeed by the master. In the 1980s, however, Dr. Josua Bruyn of the Foundation Rembrandt Research Project cautiously and tentatively attributed the painting to one of Rembrandt’s closest and most talented pupils, Willem Drost, about whom little is known. But Bruyn’s remained a minority opinion, the suggestion of Drost’s authorship is now generally rejected, and the Frick itself never changed its own attribution, the label still reading «Rembrandt» and not «attributed to» or «school of». More recent opinion has shifted even more decisively in favor of the Frick; In his 1999 book Rembrandt’s Eyes, Simon Schama and the Rembrandt Project scholar Ernst van de Wetering (Melbourne Symposium, 1997) both argued for attribution to the master. Those few scholars who still question Rembrandt’s authorship feel that the execution is uneven, and favour different attributions for different parts of the work.^[106]

A similar issue was raised by Schama concerning the verification of titles associated with the subject matter depicted in Rembrandt’s works. For example, the exact subject being portrayed in Aristotle with a Bust of Homer, recently retitled by curators at the Metropolitan Museum, has been directly challenged by Schama applying the scholarship of Paul Crenshaw.^[107] Schama presents a substantial argument that it was the famous ancient Greek painter Apelles who is depicted in contemplation by Rembrandt and not Aristotle.^[108]

Another painting, Pilate Washing His Hands, is also of questionable attribution. Critical opinion of this picture has varied since 1905, when Wilhelm von Bode described it as «a somewhat abnormal work» by Rembrandt. Scholars have since dated the painting to the 1660s and assigned it to an anonymous pupil, possibly Aert de Gelder. The composition bears superficial resemblance to mature works by Rembrandt but lacks the master’s command of illumination and modeling.^[109]

The attribution and re-attribution work is ongoing. In 2005 four oil paintings previously attributed to Rembrandt’s students were reclassified as the work of Rembrandt himself: Study of an Old Man in Profile and Study of an Old Man with a Beard from a US private collection, Study of a Weeping Woman, owned by the Detroit Institute of Arts, and Portrait of an Elderly Woman in a White Bonnet, painted in 1640.^[110] The Old Man Sitting in a Chair is a further example: in 2014, Professor Ernst van de Wetering offered his view to The Guardian that the demotion of the 1652 painting Old Man Sitting in a Chair «was a vast mistake…it is a most important painting. The painting needs to be seen in terms of Rembrandt’s experimentation». This was highlighted much earlier by Nigel Konstam who studied Rembrandt throughout his career.^[111]

Rembrandt’s own studio practice is a major factor in the difficulty of attribution, since, like many masters before him, he encouraged his students to copy his paintings, sometimes finishing or retouching them to be sold as originals, and sometimes selling them as authorized copies. Additionally, his style proved easy enough for his most talented students to emulate. Further complicating matters is the uneven quality of some of Rembrandt’s own work, and his frequent stylistic evolutions and experiments.^[112] As well, there were later imitations of his work, and restorations which so seriously damaged the original works that they are no longer recognizable.^[113] It is highly likely that there will never be universal agreement as to what does and what does not constitute a genuine Rembrandt.

Painting materials[edit]

Technical investigation of Rembrandt’s paintings in the possession of the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister^[114] and in the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister (Kassel)^[115] was conducted by Hermann Kühn in 1977. The pigment analyses of some thirty paintings have shown that Rembrandt’s palette consisted of the following pigments: lead white, various ochres, Vandyke brown, bone black, charcoal black, lamp black, vermilion, madder lake, azurite, ultramarine, yellow lake and lead-tin-yellow. One painting (Saskia van Uylenburgh as Flora)^[116] reportedly contains gamboge. Rembrandt very rarely used pure blue or green colors, the most pronounced exception being Belshazzar’s Feast^[117][118] in the National Gallery in London. The book by Bomford^[117] describes more recent technical investigations and pigment analyses of Rembrandt’s paintings predominantly in the National Gallery in London. The entire array of pigments employed by Rembrandt can be found at ColourLex.^[119] The best source for technical information on Rembrandt’s paintings on the web is the Rembrandt Database containing all works of Rembrandt with detailed investigative reports, infrared and radiography images and other scientific details.^[120]

Name and signature[edit]

«Rembrandt» is a modification of the spelling of the artist’s first name that he introduced in 1633. «Harmenszoon» indicates that his father’s name is Harmen. «van Rijn» indicates that his family lived near the Rhine.^[121]

Rembrandt’s earliest signatures (c. 1625) consisted of an initial «R», or the monogram «RH» (for Rembrant Harmenszoon), and starting in 1629, «RHL» (the «L» stood, presumably, for Leiden). In 1632, he used this monogram early in the year, then added his family name to it, «RHL-van Rijn» but replaced this form in that same year and began using his first name alone with its original spelling, «Rembrant». In 1633 he added a «d», and maintained this form consistently from then on, proving that this minor change had a meaning for him (whatever it might have been). This change is purely visual; it does not change the way his name is pronounced. Curiously enough, despite the large number of paintings and etchings signed with this modified first name, most of the documents that mentioned him during his lifetime retained the original «Rembrant» spelling. (Note: the rough chronology of signature forms above applies to the paintings, and to a lesser degree to the etchings; from 1632, presumably, there is only one etching signed «RHL-v. Rijn,» the large-format «Raising of Lazarus,» B 73).^[122] His practice of signing his work with his first name, later followed by Vincent van Gogh, was probably inspired by Raphael, Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo who, then as now, were referred to by their first names alone.^[123]

Workshop[edit]

Rembrandt ran a large workshop and had many pupils. The list of Rembrandt pupils from his period in Leiden as well as his time in Amsterdam is quite long, mostly because his influence on painters around him was so great that it is difficult to tell whether someone worked for him in his studio or just copied his style for patrons eager to acquire a Rembrandt. A partial list should include^[124] Ferdinand Bol,
Adriaen Brouwer,
Gerrit Dou,
Willem Drost,
Heiman Dullaart,
Gerbrand van den Eeckhout,
Carel Fabritius,
Govert Flinck,
Hendrick Fromantiou,
Aert de Gelder,
Samuel Dirksz van Hoogstraten,
Abraham Janssens,
Godfrey Kneller,
Philip de Koninck,
Jacob Levecq,
Nicolaes Maes,
Jürgen Ovens,
Christopher Paudiß,
Willem de Poorter,
Jan Victors, and
Willem van der Vliet.

Museum collections[edit]

The most notable collections of Rembrandt’s work are at Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum, including The Night Watch and The Jewish Bride, the Mauritshuis in The Hague, the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, the National Gallery in London, Gemäldegalerie in Berlin, Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister in Dresden, The Louvre, Nationalmuseum, Stockholm, and Schloss Wilhelmshöhe in Kassel. The Royal Castle in Warsaw displays two paintings by Rembrandt.^[125]

Notable collections of Rembrandt’s paintings in the United States are housed in the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Frick Collection in New York City, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, and J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles.^[126]

The Rembrandt House Museum in central Amsterdam in the house he bought at the height of his success, has furnishings that are mostly not original but period pieces comparable to those Rembrandt might have had, and paintings reflecting Rembrandt’s use of the house for art dealing. His printmaking studio has been set up with a printing press, where replica prints are printed. The museum has a few Rembrandt paintings, many loaned but an important collection of his prints, a good selection of which are on rotating display. All major print rooms have large collections of Rembrandt prints, although as some exist in only a single impression, no collection is complete. The degree to which these collections are displayed to the public, or can easily be viewed by them in the print room, varies greatly.

Influence and recognition[edit]

[…] I maintain that it did not occur to Protogenes, Apelles or Parrhasius, nor could it occur to them were they return to earth that (I am amazed simply to report this) a youth, a Dutchman, a beardless miller, could bring together so much in one human figure and express what is universal. All honor to thee, my Rembrandt! To have carried Illium, indeed all Asia, to Italy is a lesser achievement than to have brought the laurels of Greece and Italy to Holland, the achievement of a Dutchman who has seldom ventured outside the walls of his native city…

— Constantijn Huygens, Lord of Zuilichem, possibly the earliest known notable Rembrandt connoisseur and critic, 1629. Excerpt from the manuscript Autobiography of Constantijn Huygens (Koninklijke Bibliotheek, Den Haag), originally published in Oud Holland (1891), translated from the Dutch.^[129]

Rembrandt is one of the most famous^[130][131] and the best expertly researched visual artists in history.^[132][133] His life and art have long attracted the attention of interdisciplinary scholarship such as art history, socio-political history,^[134] cultural history,^[135] education, humanities, philosophy and aesthetics,^[136] psychology, sociology, literary studies,^[137] anatomy,^[138] medicine,^[139] religious studies,^[j][140] theology,^[141] Jewish studies,^[142] Oriental studies (Asian studies),^[143] global studies,^[144] and art market research.^[145] He has been the subject of a vast amount of literature in genres of both fiction and nonfiction. Research and scholarship related to Rembrandt is an academic field in its own right with many notable connoisseurs and scholars^[146] and has been very dynamic since the Dutch Golden Age.^{[132][147][133]}

According to art historian and Rembrandt scholar Stephanie Dickey:

[Rembrandt] earned international renown as a painter, printmaker, teacher, and art collector while never leaving the Dutch Republic. In his home city of Leiden and in Amsterdam, where he worked for nearly forty years, he mentored generations of other painters and produced a body of work that has never ceased to attract admiration, critique, and interpretation. (…) Rembrandt’s art is a key component in any study of the Dutch Golden Age, and his membership in the canon of artistic genius is well established but he is also a figure whose significance transcends specialist interest. Literary critics have pondered «Rembrandt» as a «cultural text»; novelists, playwrights, and filmmakers have romanticized his life, and in popular culture, his name has become synonymous with excellence for products and services, ranging from toothpaste to self-help advice.^[133]

Francisco Goya, often considered to be among the last of the Old Masters, said, «I have had three masters: Nature, Velázquez, and Rembrandt.» («Yo no he tenido otros maestros que la Naturaleza, Velázquez y Rembrandt.»)^{[148][149][150]} In the history of the reception and interpretation of Rembrandt’s art, it was the significant Rembrandt-inspired ‘revivals’ or ‘rediscoveries’ in 18th–19th century France,^[151][152] Germany,^{[153][154][155]} and Britain^{[156][157][158][159]} that decisively helped in establishing his lasting fame in subsequent centuries.^[160] When a critic referred to Auguste Rodin’s busts in the same vein as Rembrandt’s portraits, the French sculptor responded: «Compare me with Rembrandt? What sacrilege! With Rembrandt, the colossus of Art! What are you thinking of, my friend! We should prostrate ourselves before Rembrandt and never compare anyone with him!”^[11] Vincent van Gogh wrote to his brother Theo (1885), «Rembrandt goes so deep into the mysterious that he says things for which there are no words in any language. It is with justice that they call Rembrandt—magician—that’s no easy occupation.»^[161]

Rembrandt and the Jewish world[edit]

Although Rembrandt was not Jewish, he had a considerable influence on many modern Jewish artists, writers and scholars (art critics and art historians in particular).^[163][164] The German-Jewish painter Max Liebermann said, «Whenever I see a Frans Hals, I feel like painting; whenever I see a Rembrandt, I feel like giving up.»^[165] Marc Chagall wrote in 1922, «Neither Imperial Russia, nor the Russia of the Soviets needs me. They don’t understand me. I am a stranger to them,» and he added, «I’m certain Rembrandt loves me.»^[166]

Rembrandt regarded the Bible as the greatest Book in the world and held it in reverent affection all his life, in affluence and poverty, in success and failure. He never wearied in his devotion to biblical themes as subjects for his paintings and other graphic presentations, and in these portrayals he was the first to have the courage to use the Jews of his environment as models for the heroes of the sacred narratives.

— Franz Landsberger, a German Jewish émigré to America, the author of Rembrandt, the Jews, and the Bible (1946)^[167][168]

Criticism of Rembrandt[edit]

Rembrandt has also been one of the most controversial (visual) artists in history.^[132][169] Several of Rembrandt’s notable critics include Constantijn Huygens, Joachim von Sandrart,^[170] Andries Pels (who called Rembrandt «the first heretic in the art of painting»),^[171] Samuel van Hoogstraten, Arnold Houbraken,^[170] Filippo Baldinucci,^[170] Gerard de Lairesse, Roger de Piles, John Ruskin,^[172] and Eugène Fromentin.^[169]

By 1875 Rembrandt was already a powerful figure, projecting from historical past into the present with such a strength that he could not be simply overlooked or passed by. The great shadow of the old master required a decided attitude. A late Romantic painter and critic, like Fromentin was, if he happened not to like some of Rembrandt’s pictures, he felt obliged to justify his feeling. The greatness of the dramatic old master was for artists of about 1875 not a matter for doubt. ‘Either I am wrong’, Fromentin wrote from Holland ‘or everybody else is wrong’. When Fromentin realized his inability to like some of the works by Rembrandt he formulated the following comments: ‘I even do not dare to write down such a blasphemy; I would get ridiculed if this is disclosed’. Only about twenty-five years earlier another French Romantic master Eugène Delacroix, when expressing his admiration for Rembrandt, has written in his Journal a very different statement: ‘… perhaps one day we will discover that Rembrandt is a much greater painter than Raphael. It is a blasphemy which would make hair raise on the heads of all the academic painters’. In 1851 the blasphemy was to put Rembrandt above Raphael. In 1875 the blasphemy was not to admire everything Rembrandt had ever produced. Between these two dates, the appreciation of Rembrandt reached its turning point and since that time he was never deprived of the high rank in the art world.

In popular culture[edit]

[…] One thing that really surprises me is the extent to which Rembrandt exists as a phenomenon in pop culture. You have this musical group call [sic] the Rembrandts, who wrote the theme song to Friends—»I’ll Be There For You». There are Rembrandt restaurants, Rembrandt hotels, art supplies and other things that are more obvious. But then there’s Rembrandt toothpaste. Why on Earth would somebody name a toothpaste after this artist who’s known for his really dark tonalities? It doesn’t make a lot of sense. But I think it’s because his name has become synonymous with quality. It’s even a verb—there’s a term in underworld slang, ‘to be Rembrandted,’ which means to be framed for a crime. And people in the cinema world use it to mean pictorial effects that are overdone. He’s just everywhere, and people who don’t know anything, who wouldn’t recognize a Rembrandt painting if they tripped over it, you say the name Rembrandt and they already know that this is a great artist. He’s become a synonym for greatness.

— Rembrandt scholar, Stephanie Dickey, in an interview with Smithsonian Magazine, December 2006^[131]

While shooting The Warrens of Virginia (1915), Cecil B. DeMille had experimented with lighting instruments borrowed from a Los Angeles opera house. When business partner Sam Goldwyn saw a scene in which only half an actor’s face was illuminated, he feared the exhibitors would pay only half the price for the picture. DeMille remonstrated that it was Rembrandt lighting. «Sam’s reply was jubilant with relief,» recalled DeMille. «For Rembrandt lighting the exhibitors would pay double!»^[173]

Works about Rembrandt[edit]

Literary works (e.g. poetry and fiction)[edit]

• To the Picture of Rembrandt, a Russian-language poem by Mikhail Lermontov, 1830
• Gaspard de la nuit: Fantaisies à la manière de Rembrandt et de Callot, a series of French-language poems by Aloysius Bertrand, 1842
• Picture This, a novel by Joseph Heller, 1988
• Moi, la Putain de Rembrandt, a French-language novel by Sylvie Matton, 1998
• Van Rijn, a novel by Sarah Emily Miano, 2006
• I Am Rembrandt’s Daughter, a novel by Lynn Cullen, 2007
• The Rembrandt Affair, a novel by Daniel Silva, 2011
• The Anatomy Lesson, a novel by Nina Siegal, 2014
• Rembrandt’s Mirror, a novel by Kim Devereux, 2015

Films[edit]

• The Stolen Rembrandt, a 1914 film directed by Leo D. Maloney and J. P. McGowan
• The Tragedy of a Great / Die Tragödie eines Großen, a 1920 film directed by Arthur Günsburg
• The Missing Rembrandt, a 1932 film directed by Leslie S. Hiscott
• Rembrandt, a 1936 film directed by Alexander Korda
• Rembrandt, a 1940 film
• Rembrandt in de schuilkelder / Rembrandt in the Bunker, a 1941 film directed by Gerard Rutten
• Rembrandt, a 1942 film directed by Hans Steinhoff
• Rembrandt: A Self-Portrait, a 1954 documentary film by Morrie Roizman
• Rembrandt, schilder van de mens / Rembrandt, Painter of Man, a 1957 film directed by Bert Haanstra
• Rembrandt fecit 1669, a 1977 film directed by Jos Stelling
• Rembrandt: The Public Eye and the Private Gaze, a 1992 documentary film by Simon Schama
• Rembrandt, a 1999 film directed by Charles Matton
• Rembrandt: Fathers & Sons [it], a 1999 film directed by David Devine
• Stealing Rembrandt, a 2003 film directed by Jannik Johansen and Anders Thomas Jensen
• Simon Schama’s Power of Art: Rembrandt, a 2006 BBC documentary film series by Simon Schama
• Nightwatching, a 2007 film directed by Peter Greenaway
• Rembrandt’s J’Accuse, a 2008 documentary film by Peter Greenaway
• Rembrandt en ik [nl], a 2011 film directed by Marleen Gorris
• Schama on Rembrandt: Masterpieces of the Late Years, a 2014 documentary film by Simon Schama
• Rembrandt: From the National Gallery, London and Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, a 2014 documentary film by Exhibition on Screen

Selected works[edit]

• The Stoning of Saint Stephen (1625) – Musée des Beaux-Arts, Lyon
• Andromeda Chained to the Rocks (1630) – Mauritshuis, The Hague
• Jacob de Gheyn III (1632) – Dulwich Picture Gallery, London
• Philosopher in Meditation (1632) – The Louvre, Paris
• The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp (1632) – Mauritshuis, The Hague
• Artemisia (1634) – oil on canvas, 142 × 152 cm, Museo del Prado, Madrid
• Descent from the Cross (1634) – oil on canvas, 158 × 117 cm, looted from the Landgrave of Hesse-Kassel (or Hesse-Cassel), Germany in 1806, currently Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg
• Belshazzar’s Feast (1635) – National Gallery, London
• The Prodigal Son in the Tavern (c. 1635) – oil on canvas, 161 × 131 cm Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Dresden
• Danaë (1636 – c. 1643) – Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg
• The Scholar at the Lectern (1641) – Royal Castle in Warsaw, Warsaw
• The Girl in a Picture Frame (1641) – Royal Castle, Warsaw
• The Night Watch, formally The Militia Company of Captain Frans Banning Cocq (1642) – Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam
• Christ Healing the Sick (etching c. 1643, also known as the Hundred Guilder Print), nicknamed for the huge sum paid for it
• Boaz and Ruth (1643) aka The Old Rabbi or Old Man – Woburn Abbey/Gemaldegalerie, Berlin
• The Mill (1645/48) – National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
• Old Man with a Gold Chain («Old Man with a Black Hat and Gorget«) (c. 1631) Art Institute of Chicago
• Susanna and the Elders (1647) – oil on panel, 76 × 91 cm, Gemäldegalerie, Berlin
• Head of Christ (c. 1648–56) – The Philadelphia Museum of Art^[174]
• Aristotle Contemplating a Bust of Homer (1653) – Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
• Bathsheba at Her Bath (1654) – The Louvre, Paris
• Christ Presented to the People (Ecce Homo) (1655) – Drypoint, Birmingham Museum of Art
• Selfportrait (1658) – Frick Collection, New York
• The Three Crosses (1660) Etching, fourth state
• Ahasuerus and Haman at the Feast of Esther (1660) – Pushkin Museum, Moscow
• The Conspiracy of Claudius Civilis (1661) – Nationalmuseum, Stockholm (Claudius Civilis led a Dutch revolt against the Romans) (most of the cut up painting is lost, only the central part still exists)
• Portrait of Dirck van Os (1662) – Joslyn Art Museum, Omaha, Nebraska
• Syndics of the Drapers’ Guild (Dutch De Staalmeesters, 1662) – Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam
• The Jewish Bride (1665) – Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam
• Haman before Esther (1665) – National Museum of Art of Romania, Bucharest^[175]
• The Entombment Sketch (c. 1639, reworked c. 1654) – oil on oak panel, Hunterian Museum and Art Gallery, Glasgow
• Saul and David (c. 1660–1665) – Mauritshuis, The Hague
• Portrait of an Old Man (1645) – Calouste Gulbenkian Museum, Lisbon
• Pallas Athena (c.1657) – Calouste Gulbenkian Museum, Lisbon

Exhibitions[edit]

• Sept–Oct 1898: Rembrandt Tentoonstelling (Rembrandt Exhibition), Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.^[176]
• Jan–Feb 1899: Rembrandt Tentoonstelling (Rembrandt Exhibition), Royal Academy, London, England.^[176]
• 21 April 2011 – 18 July 2011: Rembrandt and the Face of Jesus, Musée du Louvre.^[177]
• 16 September 2013 – 14 November 2013: Rembrandt: The Consummate Etcher, Syracuse University Art Galleries.^[178]
• 19 May 2014 – 27 June 2014: From Rembrandt to Rosenquist: Works on Paper from the NAC’s Permanent Collection, National Arts Club.^[179]
• 19 October 2014 – 4 January 2015: Rembrandt, Rubens, Gainsborough and the Golden Age of Painting in Europe, Jule Collins Smith Museum of Art.^[180]
• 15 October 2014 – 18 January 2015: Rembrandt: The Late Works, The National Gallery, London.^[181]
• 12 February 2015 – 17 May 2015: Late Rembrandt, The Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.^[182]
• 16 September 2018 – 6 January 2019: Rembrandt – Painter as Printmaker, Denver Art Museum, Denver.^[183]
• 24 Aug 2019 – 1 December 2019: Leiden circa 1630: Rembrandt Emerges, Agnes Etherington Art Centre, Kingston, Ontario.^[184]
• 4 October 2019 – 2 February 2020: Rembrandt’s Light, Dulwich Picture Gallery, London.^[185]
• 18 February 2020 – 30 August 2020: Rembrandt and Amsterdam portraiture, 1590–1670 , Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid.^[186]
• 10 August 2020 – 1 November 2020: Young Rembrandt, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford.^[187]

Paintings[edit]

Self-portraits[edit]

• 

• 

  Self-Portrait with Velvet Beret and Furred Mantle (1634)

• 

• 

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  Self-portrait (1655) an oil on walnut portrait cut down in size at. Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna

• 

• 

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  Self-portrait (1669)

Other paintings[edit]

• 

  Bust of an old man with a fur hat, (1630), a painting of Rembrandt’s father

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• 

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• 

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  Portrait of Aeltje Uylenburgh (1632) at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston

• 

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  Portrait of Saskia van Uylenburgh (c. 1633–34)

• 

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  Susanna (1636)

• 

• 

  Danaë (c. 1636-43) at Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg, Russia

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  An Old Man in Red (c. 1652–54)

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  Woman in a Doorway (1657–1658)

• 

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• 

Drawings and etchings[edit]

• Rembrandt drawings at the Albertina

• 

  Self-portrait, c. 1628–29, pen and brush and ink on paper

• 

  Self-portrait in a cap, with eyes wide open, 1630, etching and burin

• 

  An elephant, 1637, drawing in black chalk on paper, Albertina, Austria

• 

  Christ and the woman taken in adultery, c. 1639–41, drawing in ink, Louvre

• 

  The Windmill, 1641, etching

• 

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  Two Old Men in Conversation /Two Jews in Discussion, Walking, year unknown, black chalk and brown ink on paper, Teylers Museum

• 

  A child being taught to walk (c. 1635). David Hockney said: «I think it’s the greatest drawing ever done… It’s a magnificent drawing, magnificent.»^[94]

• 

  A young woman sleeping (c. 1654). Shows Rembrandt’s calligraphic-style draughtsmanship.^[97][98]

Notes[edit]

References[edit]

Works cited[edit]

Further reading[edit]

External links[edit]

• A biography of the artist Rembrandt Harmensz. van Rijn from the National Gallery, London
• Works and literature on Rembrandt from Pubhist.com
• The Drawings of Rembrandt: a revision of Otto Benesch’s catalogue raisonné by Martin Royalton-Kisch (in progress)
• Rembrandt’s house in Amsterdam Site of the Rembrandt House Museum in Amsterdam, with images of many of his etchings
• 114 artworks by or after Rembrandt at the Art UK site
• Works by or about Rembrandt at Internet Archive
• Rembrandt van Rijn, General Resources
• The transparent connoisseur 3: the 30 million pound question by Gary Schwartz
• Rembrandt
• The Rembrandt Database research data on the paintings, including the full contents of the first volumes of A Corpus of Rembrandt Paintings by the Rembrandt Research Project
• Die Urkunden über Rembrandt by C. Hofstede de Groot (1906).

Rembrandt
Rembrandt as depicted in his 1659 Self-Portrait with Beret and Turned-Up Collar (now housed in the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.)
Born	Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn 15 July 1606[1] Leiden, Dutch Republic
Died	4 October 1669 (aged 63) Amsterdam, Dutch Republic
Education	Jacob van Swanenburg Pieter Lastman
Known for	Painting, printmaking, drawing
Notable work	Self-portraits The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp (1632) Belshazzar’s Feast (1635) The Night Watch (1642) Bathsheba at Her Bath (1654) Syndics of the Drapers’ Guild (1662) The Hundred Guilder Print (etching, c. 1647–1649)
Movement	Dutch Golden Age Baroque

Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn (,^[2] Dutch: [ˈrɛmbrɑnt ˈɦɑrmə(n)ˌsoːɱ vɑn ˈrɛin] (listen); 15 July 1606^[1] – 4 October 1669), usually simply known as Rembrandt, was a Dutch Golden Age painter, printmaker and draughtsman. An innovative and prolific master in three media,^[3] he is generally considered one of the greatest visual artists in the history of art and the most important in Dutch art history.^[4] It is estimated Rembrandt produced a total of about three hundred paintings, three hundred etchings and two thousand drawings.

Unlike most Dutch masters of the 17th century, Rembrandt’s works depict a wide range of styles and subject matter, from portraits and self-portraits to landscapes, genre scenes, allegorical and historical scenes, biblical and mythological themes and animal studies. His contributions to art came in a period of great wealth and cultural achievement that historians call the Dutch Golden Age, when Dutch art (especially Dutch painting), whilst antithetical to the Baroque style that dominated Europe, was prolific and innovative. This era gave rise to important new genres. Like many artists of the Dutch Golden Age, such as Jan Vermeer, Rembrandt was an avid art collector and dealer.

Rembrandt never went abroad but was considerably influenced by the work of the Italian masters and Netherlandish artists who had studied in Italy, like Pieter Lastman, the Utrecht Caravaggists, Flemish Baroque, and Peter Paul Rubens. After he achieved youthful success as a portrait painter, Rembrandt’s later years were marked by personal tragedy and financial hardships. Yet his etchings and paintings were popular throughout his lifetime, his reputation as an artist remained high,^[5] and for twenty years he taught many important Dutch painters.^[6]

Rembrandt’s portraits of his contemporaries, self-portraits and illustrations of scenes from the Bible are regarded as his greatest creative triumphs. His self-portraits form an intimate autobiography.^[4] Rembrandt’s foremost contribution in the history of printmaking was his transformation of the etching process from a relatively new reproductive technique into an art form.^[7][8] His reputation as the greatest etcher in the history of the medium was established in his lifetime. Few of his paintings left the Dutch Republic while he lived but his prints were circulated throughout Europe, and his wider reputation was initially based on them alone.

In his works, he exhibited knowledge of classical iconography. A depiction of a biblical scene was informed by Rembrandt’s knowledge of the specific text, his assimilation of classical composition, and his observations of Amsterdam’s Jewish population.^[9] Because of his empathy for the human condition, he has been called «one of the great prophets of civilization».^[10] The French sculptor Auguste Rodin said, «Compare me with Rembrandt! What sacrilege! With Rembrandt, the colossus of Art! We should prostrate ourselves before Rembrandt and never compare anyone with him!»^[11]

Early life and education[edit]

Rembrandt^[a] Harmenszoon van Rijn was born on 15 July 1606 in Leiden,^[1] in the Dutch Republic, now the Netherlands. He was the ninth child born to Harmen Gerritszoon van Rijn and Neeltgen Willemsdochter van Zuijtbrouck.^[13] His family was quite well-to-do; his father was a miller and his mother was a baker’s daughter. Religion is a central theme in Rembrandt’s works and the religiously fraught period in which he lived makes his faith a matter of interest. His mother was Catholic, and his father belonged to the Dutch Reformed Church. While his work reveals deep Christian faith, there is no evidence that Rembrandt formally belonged to any church. Five of his children were christened in Dutch Reformed churches in Amsterdam: four in the Oude Kerk (Old Church) and one, Titus, in the Zuiderkerk (Southern Church).^[14]

As a boy, he attended a Latin school. At the age of 13, he was enrolled at the University of Leiden, although according to a contemporary he had a greater inclination towards painting; he was soon apprenticed to a Leiden history painter, Jacob van Swanenburg, with whom he spent three years.^[15] After a brief but important apprenticeship of six months with the painter Pieter Lastman in Amsterdam, Rembrandt stayed a few months with Jacob Pynas and then started his own workshop, though Simon van Leeuwen claimed that Joris van Schooten taught Rembrandt in Leiden.^[15][16] Unlike many of his contemporaries who traveled to Italy as part of their artistic training, Rembrandt never left the Dutch Republic during his lifetime.^[17][18]

Career[edit]

In 1624 or 1625, Rembrandt opened a studio in Leiden, which he shared with friend and colleague Jan Lievens. In 1627, Rembrandt began to accept students, which included Gerrit Dou in 1628.^[19]
In 1629, Rembrandt was discovered by the statesman Constantijn Huygens who procured for Rembrandt important commissions from the court of The Hague. As a result of this connection, Prince Frederik Hendrik continued to purchase paintings from Rembrandt until 1646.^[20]

At the end of 1631, Rembrandt moved to Amsterdam, a city rapidly expanding as the business and trade capital. He began to practice as a professional portraitist for the first time, with great success. He initially stayed with an art dealer, Hendrick van Uylenburgh, and in 1634, married Hendrick’s cousin, Saskia van Uylenburgh.^[21][22] Saskia came from a respected family: her father Rombertus van Uylenburgh had been a lawyer and a burgomaster (mayor) of Leeuwarden. The couple married in the local church of St. Annaparochie without the presence of Rembrandt’s relatives.^[23] In the same year, Rembrandt became a citizen of Amsterdam and a member of the local guild of painters. He also acquired a number of students, among them Ferdinand Bol and Govert Flinck.^[24]

In 1635, Rembrandt and Saskia rented a fashionable lodging with a view of the river.^[25] In 1639 they moved to a large and recently modernized house in the upscale ‘Breestraat’ with artists and art dealers; Nicolaes Pickenoy was his neighbor.
The mortgage to finance the 13,000 guilder purchase would be a cause for later financial difficulties.^[b][24] The neighborhood sheltered many immigrants and was becoming the Jewish quarter. It was there that Rembrandt frequently sought his Jewish neighbors to model for his Old Testament scenes.^[28]

Although they were by now affluent, the couple suffered several personal setbacks; their son Rumbartus died two months after his birth in 1635 and their daughter Cornelia died at just three weeks of age in 1638. In 1640, they had a second daughter, also named Cornelia, who died after living barely over a month. Only their fourth child, Titus, who was born in 1641, survived into adulthood. Saskia died in 1642, probably from tuberculosis. Rembrandt’s drawings of her on her sick and death bed are among his most moving works.^[29][30]

During Saskia’s illness, Geertje Dircx was hired as Titus’ caretaker and dry nurse; at some time she also became Rembrandt’s lover. In 1649 she left and charged Rembrandt with breach of promise (a euphemism for seduction under [breached] promise to marry) and be awarded alimony.^[24] Rembrandt tried to settle the matter amicably but she pawned the ring he had given her that once belonged to Saskia to maintain her livelihood. The court particularly stated that Rembrandt had to pay a maintenance allowance, provided that Titus remained her only heir and she sold none of Rembrandt’s possessions.^[31] In 1650 Rembrandt paid for her trip to have her committed to an asylum or poorhouse at Gouda.^[32] Five years later he didn’t support her release. In August 1656 Geertje was listed as one of Rembrandt’s seven major creditors.

In early 1649 Rembrandt began a relationship with the much younger Hendrickje Stoffels, who had initially been his maid. She may have been the cause that Geertje left. In July 1654 she was pregnant, and received a summons from the Reformed Church to answer the charge «that she had committed the acts of a whore with Rembrandt the painter». She admitted and was banned from receiving communion. Rembrandt was not summoned to appear for the Church council; he seems not to have been a (very active) member.^[33] In October they had a daughter, Cornelia but Rembrandt had not married Hendrickje. Had he remarried he would have lost access to a trust set up for Titus in Saskia’s will.^[29]

Insolvency[edit]

Rembrandt lived beyond his means, buying art, prints and rarities. In January 1653 the sale of the property formally closed but Rembrandt still had to pay half of the mortgage. The creditors began to insist on installments but Rembrandt refused and asked for a postponement. The house needed carpentry work and Rembrandt borrowed money from Jan Six among others.^[34] In 1655 the 14-years-old Titus made a will, making his father sole heir, shutting out his mother’s family.^[35] After a notorious year with plague, (art) business dropped and Rembrandt applied for a high court arrangement (cessio bonorum). In 1656 he declared his insolvency, taking stock and voluntarily surrendered his goods.^[36] Meanwhile, he had donated the house to his son.^[37] The authorities and his creditors were generally accommodating to him, giving him plenty of time to pay his debts. In November 1657 an auction was organized to sell his paintings and a large number of etching plates, drawings (some by Raphael, Mantegna and Giorgione).^[c] Rembrandt was allowed to keep all his tools including his etching press as a mean of income.^[38]

The sale list with 363 items gives a good insight into Rembrandt’s collections, which, apart from Old Master paintings and drawings, included statues and busts of the Roman emperors and Greek philosophers, books (a bible), armor (helmets, bows and arrows), porcelain, among many objects from Asia, a collections of natural history (two lion skins, a bird-of-paradise), and minerals.^[39] The prices realized in the sale were disappointing.^[40] In February 1658 Rembrandt’ house was sold at a (foreclosure) auction and the family quickly moved to more modest accommodation at Rozengracht;^[41] Hendrickje complained at the authorities as she left an oak cupboard.^[42] Early December 1660 the sale of the house was closed but the money went to Titus’ guardian.^[43] Two weeks later Hendrickje and Titus set up a dummy corporation as art dealers, so Rembrandt, who had board and lodging, could continue to produce.^[44][45]

In 1661, the new business was contracted to complete work for the newly built city hall. The resulting work, The Conspiracy of Claudius Civilis, was rejected by the mayors and returned to the painter within a few weeks; the surviving fragment (in Stockholm) is only a quarter of the original work.^[46] In 1662 he was still fulfilling major commissions for portraits and finished the Staalmeesters.^[47] Around this time Rembrandt took on his last apprentice, Aert de Gelder. It is problematic how wealthy Rembrandt was and he overestimated the value of his art collection.^[48] Anyhow, half was earmarked for Titus’ inheritance.^[49]

In March 1663 Hendrickje was sick and Titus was allowed to act. Isaac van Hertsbeeck, Rembrandt’s main creditor, went to the High Court to contest that Titus had to be paid first.^[50] He lost more than once and had to pay the money he had already received to Titus in 1665 who was by then declared of age.^[51][52] Rembrandt was working on the Jewish Bride and his three final self-portraits but fell into rent arrears.^[53] Cosimo III de’ Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany visited Rembrandt twice and travelled back to Florence with one of the self-portraits.^[54]

Rembrandt outlived both Hendrickje and Titus, who died in September 1668, leaving a pregnant widow behind. Rembrandt died on Friday 4 October 1669; he was buried four days later in a rented grave in the Westerkerk. Supposedly as a rich man as the heirs paid in burial taxes a substantial amount of money, f 15.^[55] Cornelia (1654-1684), his illegitimate child, moved to Batavia in 1670 with an obscure painter and the inheritance of her mother.^[56] His only grandchild, Titia (1669-1715), inherited a considerable sum from Titus.^[57] According to Bob Wessels: With more than 20 legal conflicts and disputes, in all areas of life and business, Rembrandt also led a turbulent legal and financial life.^[58]

Works[edit]

In a letter to Huygens, Rembrandt offered the only surviving explanation of what he sought to achieve through his art, writing that, «the greatest and most natural movement», translated from de meeste en de natuurlijkste beweegelijkheid. The word «beweegelijkheid» translates to «emotion» or «motive». Whether this refers to objectives, material, or something else, is not known but critics have drawn particular attention to the way Rembrandt seamlessly melded the earthly and spiritual.^[59]

Earlier 20th century connoisseurs claimed Rembrandt had produced well over 600 paintings,^[60] nearly 400 etchings and 2,000 drawings.^[61] More recent scholarship, from the 1960s to the present day (led by the Rembrandt Research Project), often controversially, has winnowed his oeuvre to nearer 300 paintings.^[d] His prints, traditionally all called etchings, although many are produced in whole or part by engraving and sometimes drypoint, have a much more stable total of slightly under 300.^[e] It is likely Rembrandt made many more drawings in his lifetime than 2,000 but those extant are more rare than presumed.^[f] Two experts claim that the number of drawings whose autograph status can be regarded as effectively «certain» is no higher than about 75, although this is disputed. The list was to be unveiled at a scholarly meeting in February 2010.^[64]

At one time, approximately 90 paintings were counted as Rembrandt self-portraits but it is now known that he had his students copy his own self-portraits as part of their training. Modern scholarship has reduced the autograph count to over forty paintings, as well as a few drawings and thirty-one etchings, which include many of the most remarkable images of the group.^[65] Some show him posing in quasi-historical fancy dress, or pulling faces at himself. His oil paintings trace the progress from an uncertain young man, through the dapper and very successful portrait-painter of the 1630s, to the troubled but massively powerful portraits of his old age. Together they give a remarkably clear picture of the man, his appearance and his psychological make-up, as revealed by his richly weathered face.^[g]

In his portraits and self-portraits, he angles the sitter’s face in such a way that the ridge of the nose nearly always forms the line of demarcation between brightly illuminated and shadowy areas. A Rembrandt face is a face partially eclipsed; and the nose, bright and obvious, thrusting into the riddle of halftones, serves to focus the viewer’s attention upon, and to dramatize, the division between a flood of light—an overwhelming clarity—and a brooding duskiness.^[66]

In a number of biblical works, including The Raising of the Cross, Joseph Telling His Dreams, and The Stoning of Saint Stephen, Rembrandt painted himself as a character in the crowd. Durham suggests that this was because the Bible was for Rembrandt «a kind of diary, an account of moments in his own life».^[67]

Among the more prominent characteristics of Rembrandt’s work are his use of chiaroscuro, the theatrical employment of light and shadow derived from Caravaggio, or, more likely, from the Dutch Caravaggisti but adapted for very personal means.^[68] Also notable are his dramatic and lively presentation of subjects, devoid of the rigid formality that his contemporaries often displayed, and a deeply felt compassion for mankind, irrespective of wealth and age. His immediate family—his wife Saskia, his son Titus and his common-law wife Hendrickje—often figured prominently in his paintings, many of which had mythical, biblical or historical themes.

Periods, themes and styles[edit]

Throughout his career, Rembrandt took as his primary subjects the themes of portraiture, landscape and narrative painting. For the last, he was especially praised by his contemporaries, who extolled him as a masterly interpreter of biblical stories for his skill in representing emotions and attention to detail.^[71] Stylistically, his paintings progressed from the early «smooth» manner, characterized by fine technique in the portrayal of illusionistic form, to the late «rough» treatment of richly variegated paint surfaces, which allowed for an illusionism of form suggested by the tactile quality of the paint itself.^[72]

A parallel development may be seen in Rembrandt’s skill as a printmaker. In the etchings of his maturity, particularly from the late 1640s onward, the freedom and breadth of his drawings and paintings found expression in the print medium as well. The works encompass a wide range of subject matter and technique, sometimes leaving large areas of white paper to suggest space, at other times employing complex webs of line to produce rich dark tones.^[73]

Lastman’s influence on Rembrandt was most prominent during his period in Leiden from 1625 to 1631.^[74] Paintings were rather small but rich in details (for example, in costumes and jewelry). Religious and allegorical themes were favored, as were tronies.^[74] In 1626 Rembrandt produced his first etchings, the wide dissemination of which would largely account for his international fame.^[74] In 1629 he completed Judas Repentant, Returning the Pieces of Silver and The Artist in His Studio, works that evidence his interest in the handling of light and variety of paint application, and constitute the first major progress in his development as a painter.^[75]

During his early years in Amsterdam (1632–1636), Rembrandt began to paint dramatic biblical and mythological scenes in high contrast and of large format (The Blinding of Samson, 1636, Belshazzar’s Feast, c. 1635 Danaë, 1636 but reworked later), seeking to emulate the baroque style of Rubens.^[76] With the occasional help of assistants in Uylenburgh’s workshop, he painted numerous portrait commissions both small (Jacob de Gheyn III) and large (Portrait of the Shipbuilder Jan Rijcksen and his Wife, 1633, Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp, 1632).^[77]

By the late 1630s, Rembrandt had produced a few paintings and many etchings of landscapes. Often these landscapes highlighted natural drama, featuring uprooted trees and ominous skies (Cottages before a Stormy Sky, c. 1641; The Three Trees, 1643). From 1640 his work became less exuberant and more sober in tone, possibly reflecting personal tragedy. Biblical scenes were now derived more often from the New Testament than the Old Testament, as had been the case before. In 1642 he painted The Night Watch, the most substantial of the important group portrait commissions which he received in this period, and through which he sought to find solutions to compositional and narrative problems that had been attempted in previous works.^[78]

In the decade following the Night Watch, Rembrandt’s paintings varied greatly in size, subject, and style. The previous tendency to create dramatic effects primarily by strong contrasts of light and shadow gave way to the use of frontal lighting and larger and more saturated areas of color. Simultaneously, figures came to be placed parallel to the picture plane. These changes can be seen as a move toward a classical mode of composition and, considering the more expressive use of brushwork as well, may indicate a familiarity with Venetian art (Susanna and the Elders, 1637–47).^[79]
At the same time, there was a marked decrease in painted works in favor of etchings and drawings of landscapes.^[80] In these graphic works natural drama eventually made way for quiet Dutch rural scenes.

In the 1650s, Rembrandt’s style changed again. Colors became richer and brush strokes more pronounced. With these changes, Rembrandt distanced himself from earlier work and current fashion, which increasingly inclined toward fine, detailed works. His use of light becomes more jagged and harsh, and shine becomes almost nonexistent. His singular approach to paint application may have been suggested in part by familiarity with the work of Titian, and could be seen in the context of the then current discussion of ‘finish’ and surface quality of paintings. Contemporary accounts sometimes remark disapprovingly of the coarseness of Rembrandt’s brushwork, and the artist himself was said to have dissuaded visitors from looking too closely at his paintings.^[81] The tactile manipulation of paint may hearken to medieval procedures, when mimetic effects of rendering informed a painting’s surface. The result is a richly varied handling of paint, deeply layered and often apparently haphazard, which suggests form and space in both an illusory and highly individual manner.^[82]

In later years, biblical themes were often depicted but emphasis shifted from dramatic group scenes to intimate portrait-like figures (James the Apostle, 1661). In his last years, Rembrandt painted his most deeply reflective self-portraits (from 1652 to 1669 he painted fifteen), and several moving images of both men and women (The Jewish Bride, c. 1666)—in love, in life, and before God.^[83][84]

Graphic works[edit]

Rembrandt produced etchings for most of his career, from 1626 to 1660, when he was forced to sell his printing-press and practically abandoned etching. Only the troubled year of 1649 produced no dated work.^[85] He took easily to etching and, though he learned to use a burin and partly engraved many plates, the freedom of etching technique was fundamental to his work. He was very closely involved in the whole process of printmaking, and must have printed at least early examples of his etchings himself. At first he used a style based on drawing but soon moved to one based on painting, using a mass of lines and numerous bitings with the acid to achieve different strengths of line. Towards the end of the 1630s, he reacted against this manner and moved to a simpler style, with fewer bitings.^[86] He worked on the so-called Hundred Guilder Print in stages throughout the 1640s, and it was the «critical work in the middle of his career», from which his final etching style began to emerge.^[87]
Although the print only survives in two states, the first very rare, evidence of much reworking can be seen underneath the final print and many drawings survive for elements of it.^[88]

In the mature works of the 1650s, Rembrandt was more ready to improvise on the plate and large prints typically survive in several states, up to eleven, often radically changed. He now used hatching to create his dark areas, which often take up much of the plate. He also experimented with the effects of printing on different kinds of paper, including Japanese paper, which he used frequently, and on vellum. He began to use «surface tone,» leaving a thin film of ink on parts of the plate instead of wiping it completely clean to print each impression. He made more use of drypoint, exploiting, especially in landscapes, the rich fuzzy burr that this technique gives to the first few impressions.^[89]

His prints have similar subjects to his paintings, although the 27 self-portraits are relatively more common, and portraits of other people less so. There are forty-six landscapes, mostly small, which largely set the course for the graphic treatment of landscape until the end of the 19th century. One third of his etchings are of religious subjects, many treated with a homely simplicity, whilst others are his most monumental prints. A few erotic, or just obscene, compositions have no equivalent in his paintings.^[90] He owned, until forced to sell it, a magnificent collection of prints by other artists, and many borrowings and influences in his work can be traced to artists as diverse as Mantegna, Raphael, Hercules Seghers, and Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione.

Drawings by Rembrandt and his pupils/followers have been extensively studied by many artists and scholars^[h] through the centuries. His original draughtsmanship has been described as an individualistic art style that was very similar to East Asian old masters, most notably Chinese masters:^[97] a «combination of formal clarity and calligraphic vitality in the movement of pen or brush that is closer to Chinese painting in technique and feeling than to anything in European art before the twentieth century».^[98]

Asian inspiration[edit]

Rembrandt was interested in Mughal miniatures, especially around the 1650s. He drew versions of some 23 Mughal paintings, and may have owned an album of them. These miniatures include paintings of Shah Jahan, Akbar, Jahangir and Dara Shikoh and may have influenced the costumes and other aspects of his works.^{[99][100][101][102]}

The Night Watch[edit]

Rembrandt painted The Militia Company of Captain Frans Banning Cocq between 1640 and 1642, which became his most famous work.^[103] This picture was called De Nachtwacht by the Dutch and The Night Watch by Sir Joshua Reynolds because by 1781 the picture was so dimmed and defaced that it was almost indistinguishable, and it looked quite like a night scene. After it was cleaned, it was discovered to represent broad day—a party of 18 musketeers stepping from a gloomy courtyard into the blinding sunlight. For Théophile Thoré it was the prettiest painting in the world.

The piece was commissioned for the new hall of the Kloveniersdoelen, the musketeer branch of the civic militia. Rembrandt departed from convention, which ordered that such genre pieces should be stately and formal, rather a line-up than an action scene. Instead he showed the militia readying themselves to embark on a mission, though the exact nature of the mission or event is a matter of ongoing debate.

Contrary to what is often said, the work was hailed as a success from the beginning. Parts of the canvas were cut off (approximately 20% from the left hand side was removed) to make the painting fit its new position when it was moved to Amsterdam town hall in 1715. In 1817 this large painting was moved to the Trippenhuis. Since 1885 the painting is on display at the Rijksmuseum.^[i] In 1940 the painting was moved to Kasteel Radboud; in 1941 to a bunker near Heemskerk; in 1942 to St Pietersberg; in June 1945 it was shipped back to Amsterdam.

Expert assessments[edit]

In 1968, the Rembrandt Research Project began under the sponsorship of the Netherlands Organization for the Advancement of Scientific Research; it was initially expected to last a highly optimistic ten years. Art historians teamed up with experts from other fields to reassess the authenticity of works attributed to Rembrandt, using all methods available, including state-of-the-art technical diagnostics, and to compile a complete new catalogue raisonné of his paintings. As a result of their findings, many paintings that were previously attributed to Rembrandt have been removed from their list, although others have been added back.^[105] Many of those removed are now thought to be the work of his students.

One example of activity is The Polish Rider, now housed in the Frick Collection in New York City. Rembrandt’s authorship had been questioned by at least one scholar, Alfred von Wurzbach, at the beginning of the twentieth century but for many decades later most scholars, including the foremost authority writing in English, Julius S. Held, agreed that it was indeed by the master. In the 1980s, however, Dr. Josua Bruyn of the Foundation Rembrandt Research Project cautiously and tentatively attributed the painting to one of Rembrandt’s closest and most talented pupils, Willem Drost, about whom little is known. But Bruyn’s remained a minority opinion, the suggestion of Drost’s authorship is now generally rejected, and the Frick itself never changed its own attribution, the label still reading «Rembrandt» and not «attributed to» or «school of». More recent opinion has shifted even more decisively in favor of the Frick; In his 1999 book Rembrandt’s Eyes, Simon Schama and the Rembrandt Project scholar Ernst van de Wetering (Melbourne Symposium, 1997) both argued for attribution to the master. Those few scholars who still question Rembrandt’s authorship feel that the execution is uneven, and favour different attributions for different parts of the work.^[106]

A similar issue was raised by Schama concerning the verification of titles associated with the subject matter depicted in Rembrandt’s works. For example, the exact subject being portrayed in Aristotle with a Bust of Homer, recently retitled by curators at the Metropolitan Museum, has been directly challenged by Schama applying the scholarship of Paul Crenshaw.^[107] Schama presents a substantial argument that it was the famous ancient Greek painter Apelles who is depicted in contemplation by Rembrandt and not Aristotle.^[108]

Another painting, Pilate Washing His Hands, is also of questionable attribution. Critical opinion of this picture has varied since 1905, when Wilhelm von Bode described it as «a somewhat abnormal work» by Rembrandt. Scholars have since dated the painting to the 1660s and assigned it to an anonymous pupil, possibly Aert de Gelder. The composition bears superficial resemblance to mature works by Rembrandt but lacks the master’s command of illumination and modeling.^[109]

The attribution and re-attribution work is ongoing. In 2005 four oil paintings previously attributed to Rembrandt’s students were reclassified as the work of Rembrandt himself: Study of an Old Man in Profile and Study of an Old Man with a Beard from a US private collection, Study of a Weeping Woman, owned by the Detroit Institute of Arts, and Portrait of an Elderly Woman in a White Bonnet, painted in 1640.^[110] The Old Man Sitting in a Chair is a further example: in 2014, Professor Ernst van de Wetering offered his view to The Guardian that the demotion of the 1652 painting Old Man Sitting in a Chair «was a vast mistake…it is a most important painting. The painting needs to be seen in terms of Rembrandt’s experimentation». This was highlighted much earlier by Nigel Konstam who studied Rembrandt throughout his career.^[111]

Rembrandt’s own studio practice is a major factor in the difficulty of attribution, since, like many masters before him, he encouraged his students to copy his paintings, sometimes finishing or retouching them to be sold as originals, and sometimes selling them as authorized copies. Additionally, his style proved easy enough for his most talented students to emulate. Further complicating matters is the uneven quality of some of Rembrandt’s own work, and his frequent stylistic evolutions and experiments.^[112] As well, there were later imitations of his work, and restorations which so seriously damaged the original works that they are no longer recognizable.^[113] It is highly likely that there will never be universal agreement as to what does and what does not constitute a genuine Rembrandt.

Painting materials[edit]

Technical investigation of Rembrandt’s paintings in the possession of the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister^[114] and in the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister (Kassel)^[115] was conducted by Hermann Kühn in 1977. The pigment analyses of some thirty paintings have shown that Rembrandt’s palette consisted of the following pigments: lead white, various ochres, Vandyke brown, bone black, charcoal black, lamp black, vermilion, madder lake, azurite, ultramarine, yellow lake and lead-tin-yellow. One painting (Saskia van Uylenburgh as Flora)^[116] reportedly contains gamboge. Rembrandt very rarely used pure blue or green colors, the most pronounced exception being Belshazzar’s Feast^[117][118] in the National Gallery in London. The book by Bomford^[117] describes more recent technical investigations and pigment analyses of Rembrandt’s paintings predominantly in the National Gallery in London. The entire array of pigments employed by Rembrandt can be found at ColourLex.^[119] The best source for technical information on Rembrandt’s paintings on the web is the Rembrandt Database containing all works of Rembrandt with detailed investigative reports, infrared and radiography images and other scientific details.^[120]

Name and signature[edit]

«Rembrandt» is a modification of the spelling of the artist’s first name that he introduced in 1633. «Harmenszoon» indicates that his father’s name is Harmen. «van Rijn» indicates that his family lived near the Rhine.^[121]

Rembrandt’s earliest signatures (c. 1625) consisted of an initial «R», or the monogram «RH» (for Rembrant Harmenszoon), and starting in 1629, «RHL» (the «L» stood, presumably, for Leiden). In 1632, he used this monogram early in the year, then added his family name to it, «RHL-van Rijn» but replaced this form in that same year and began using his first name alone with its original spelling, «Rembrant». In 1633 he added a «d», and maintained this form consistently from then on, proving that this minor change had a meaning for him (whatever it might have been). This change is purely visual; it does not change the way his name is pronounced. Curiously enough, despite the large number of paintings and etchings signed with this modified first name, most of the documents that mentioned him during his lifetime retained the original «Rembrant» spelling. (Note: the rough chronology of signature forms above applies to the paintings, and to a lesser degree to the etchings; from 1632, presumably, there is only one etching signed «RHL-v. Rijn,» the large-format «Raising of Lazarus,» B 73).^[122] His practice of signing his work with his first name, later followed by Vincent van Gogh, was probably inspired by Raphael, Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo who, then as now, were referred to by their first names alone.^[123]

Workshop[edit]

Rembrandt ran a large workshop and had many pupils. The list of Rembrandt pupils from his period in Leiden as well as his time in Amsterdam is quite long, mostly because his influence on painters around him was so great that it is difficult to tell whether someone worked for him in his studio or just copied his style for patrons eager to acquire a Rembrandt. A partial list should include^[124] Ferdinand Bol,
Adriaen Brouwer,
Gerrit Dou,
Willem Drost,
Heiman Dullaart,
Gerbrand van den Eeckhout,
Carel Fabritius,
Govert Flinck,
Hendrick Fromantiou,
Aert de Gelder,
Samuel Dirksz van Hoogstraten,
Abraham Janssens,
Godfrey Kneller,
Philip de Koninck,
Jacob Levecq,
Nicolaes Maes,
Jürgen Ovens,
Christopher Paudiß,
Willem de Poorter,
Jan Victors, and
Willem van der Vliet.

Museum collections[edit]

The most notable collections of Rembrandt’s work are at Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum, including The Night Watch and The Jewish Bride, the Mauritshuis in The Hague, the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, the National Gallery in London, Gemäldegalerie in Berlin, Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister in Dresden, The Louvre, Nationalmuseum, Stockholm, and Schloss Wilhelmshöhe in Kassel. The Royal Castle in Warsaw displays two paintings by Rembrandt.^[125]

Notable collections of Rembrandt’s paintings in the United States are housed in the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Frick Collection in New York City, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, and J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles.^[126]

The Rembrandt House Museum in central Amsterdam in the house he bought at the height of his success, has furnishings that are mostly not original but period pieces comparable to those Rembrandt might have had, and paintings reflecting Rembrandt’s use of the house for art dealing. His printmaking studio has been set up with a printing press, where replica prints are printed. The museum has a few Rembrandt paintings, many loaned but an important collection of his prints, a good selection of which are on rotating display. All major print rooms have large collections of Rembrandt prints, although as some exist in only a single impression, no collection is complete. The degree to which these collections are displayed to the public, or can easily be viewed by them in the print room, varies greatly.

Influence and recognition[edit]

[…] I maintain that it did not occur to Protogenes, Apelles or Parrhasius, nor could it occur to them were they return to earth that (I am amazed simply to report this) a youth, a Dutchman, a beardless miller, could bring together so much in one human figure and express what is universal. All honor to thee, my Rembrandt! To have carried Illium, indeed all Asia, to Italy is a lesser achievement than to have brought the laurels of Greece and Italy to Holland, the achievement of a Dutchman who has seldom ventured outside the walls of his native city…

— Constantijn Huygens, Lord of Zuilichem, possibly the earliest known notable Rembrandt connoisseur and critic, 1629. Excerpt from the manuscript Autobiography of Constantijn Huygens (Koninklijke Bibliotheek, Den Haag), originally published in Oud Holland (1891), translated from the Dutch.^[129]

Rembrandt is one of the most famous^[130][131] and the best expertly researched visual artists in history.^[132][133] His life and art have long attracted the attention of interdisciplinary scholarship such as art history, socio-political history,^[134] cultural history,^[135] education, humanities, philosophy and aesthetics,^[136] psychology, sociology, literary studies,^[137] anatomy,^[138] medicine,^[139] religious studies,^[j][140] theology,^[141] Jewish studies,^[142] Oriental studies (Asian studies),^[143] global studies,^[144] and art market research.^[145] He has been the subject of a vast amount of literature in genres of both fiction and nonfiction. Research and scholarship related to Rembrandt is an academic field in its own right with many notable connoisseurs and scholars^[146] and has been very dynamic since the Dutch Golden Age.^{[132][147][133]}

According to art historian and Rembrandt scholar Stephanie Dickey:

[Rembrandt] earned international renown as a painter, printmaker, teacher, and art collector while never leaving the Dutch Republic. In his home city of Leiden and in Amsterdam, where he worked for nearly forty years, he mentored generations of other painters and produced a body of work that has never ceased to attract admiration, critique, and interpretation. (…) Rembrandt’s art is a key component in any study of the Dutch Golden Age, and his membership in the canon of artistic genius is well established but he is also a figure whose significance transcends specialist interest. Literary critics have pondered «Rembrandt» as a «cultural text»; novelists, playwrights, and filmmakers have romanticized his life, and in popular culture, his name has become synonymous with excellence for products and services, ranging from toothpaste to self-help advice.^[133]

Francisco Goya, often considered to be among the last of the Old Masters, said, «I have had three masters: Nature, Velázquez, and Rembrandt.» («Yo no he tenido otros maestros que la Naturaleza, Velázquez y Rembrandt.»)^{[148][149][150]} In the history of the reception and interpretation of Rembrandt’s art, it was the significant Rembrandt-inspired ‘revivals’ or ‘rediscoveries’ in 18th–19th century France,^[151][152] Germany,^{[153][154][155]} and Britain^{[156][157][158][159]} that decisively helped in establishing his lasting fame in subsequent centuries.^[160] When a critic referred to Auguste Rodin’s busts in the same vein as Rembrandt’s portraits, the French sculptor responded: «Compare me with Rembrandt? What sacrilege! With Rembrandt, the colossus of Art! What are you thinking of, my friend! We should prostrate ourselves before Rembrandt and never compare anyone with him!”^[11] Vincent van Gogh wrote to his brother Theo (1885), «Rembrandt goes so deep into the mysterious that he says things for which there are no words in any language. It is with justice that they call Rembrandt—magician—that’s no easy occupation.»^[161]

Rembrandt and the Jewish world[edit]

Although Rembrandt was not Jewish, he had a considerable influence on many modern Jewish artists, writers and scholars (art critics and art historians in particular).^[163][164] The German-Jewish painter Max Liebermann said, «Whenever I see a Frans Hals, I feel like painting; whenever I see a Rembrandt, I feel like giving up.»^[165] Marc Chagall wrote in 1922, «Neither Imperial Russia, nor the Russia of the Soviets needs me. They don’t understand me. I am a stranger to them,» and he added, «I’m certain Rembrandt loves me.»^[166]

Rembrandt regarded the Bible as the greatest Book in the world and held it in reverent affection all his life, in affluence and poverty, in success and failure. He never wearied in his devotion to biblical themes as subjects for his paintings and other graphic presentations, and in these portrayals he was the first to have the courage to use the Jews of his environment as models for the heroes of the sacred narratives.

— Franz Landsberger, a German Jewish émigré to America, the author of Rembrandt, the Jews, and the Bible (1946)^[167][168]

Criticism of Rembrandt[edit]

Rembrandt has also been one of the most controversial (visual) artists in history.^[132][169] Several of Rembrandt’s notable critics include Constantijn Huygens, Joachim von Sandrart,^[170] Andries Pels (who called Rembrandt «the first heretic in the art of painting»),^[171] Samuel van Hoogstraten, Arnold Houbraken,^[170] Filippo Baldinucci,^[170] Gerard de Lairesse, Roger de Piles, John Ruskin,^[172] and Eugène Fromentin.^[169]

By 1875 Rembrandt was already a powerful figure, projecting from historical past into the present with such a strength that he could not be simply overlooked or passed by. The great shadow of the old master required a decided attitude. A late Romantic painter and critic, like Fromentin was, if he happened not to like some of Rembrandt’s pictures, he felt obliged to justify his feeling. The greatness of the dramatic old master was for artists of about 1875 not a matter for doubt. ‘Either I am wrong’, Fromentin wrote from Holland ‘or everybody else is wrong’. When Fromentin realized his inability to like some of the works by Rembrandt he formulated the following comments: ‘I even do not dare to write down such a blasphemy; I would get ridiculed if this is disclosed’. Only about twenty-five years earlier another French Romantic master Eugène Delacroix, when expressing his admiration for Rembrandt, has written in his Journal a very different statement: ‘… perhaps one day we will discover that Rembrandt is a much greater painter than Raphael. It is a blasphemy which would make hair raise on the heads of all the academic painters’. In 1851 the blasphemy was to put Rembrandt above Raphael. In 1875 the blasphemy was not to admire everything Rembrandt had ever produced. Between these two dates, the appreciation of Rembrandt reached its turning point and since that time he was never deprived of the high rank in the art world.

In popular culture[edit]

[…] One thing that really surprises me is the extent to which Rembrandt exists as a phenomenon in pop culture. You have this musical group call [sic] the Rembrandts, who wrote the theme song to Friends—»I’ll Be There For You». There are Rembrandt restaurants, Rembrandt hotels, art supplies and other things that are more obvious. But then there’s Rembrandt toothpaste. Why on Earth would somebody name a toothpaste after this artist who’s known for his really dark tonalities? It doesn’t make a lot of sense. But I think it’s because his name has become synonymous with quality. It’s even a verb—there’s a term in underworld slang, ‘to be Rembrandted,’ which means to be framed for a crime. And people in the cinema world use it to mean pictorial effects that are overdone. He’s just everywhere, and people who don’t know anything, who wouldn’t recognize a Rembrandt painting if they tripped over it, you say the name Rembrandt and they already know that this is a great artist. He’s become a synonym for greatness.

— Rembrandt scholar, Stephanie Dickey, in an interview with Smithsonian Magazine, December 2006^[131]

While shooting The Warrens of Virginia (1915), Cecil B. DeMille had experimented with lighting instruments borrowed from a Los Angeles opera house. When business partner Sam Goldwyn saw a scene in which only half an actor’s face was illuminated, he feared the exhibitors would pay only half the price for the picture. DeMille remonstrated that it was Rembrandt lighting. «Sam’s reply was jubilant with relief,» recalled DeMille. «For Rembrandt lighting the exhibitors would pay double!»^[173]

Works about Rembrandt[edit]

Literary works (e.g. poetry and fiction)[edit]

• To the Picture of Rembrandt, a Russian-language poem by Mikhail Lermontov, 1830
• Gaspard de la nuit: Fantaisies à la manière de Rembrandt et de Callot, a series of French-language poems by Aloysius Bertrand, 1842
• Picture This, a novel by Joseph Heller, 1988
• Moi, la Putain de Rembrandt, a French-language novel by Sylvie Matton, 1998
• Van Rijn, a novel by Sarah Emily Miano, 2006
• I Am Rembrandt’s Daughter, a novel by Lynn Cullen, 2007
• The Rembrandt Affair, a novel by Daniel Silva, 2011
• The Anatomy Lesson, a novel by Nina Siegal, 2014
• Rembrandt’s Mirror, a novel by Kim Devereux, 2015

Films[edit]

• The Stolen Rembrandt, a 1914 film directed by Leo D. Maloney and J. P. McGowan
• The Tragedy of a Great / Die Tragödie eines Großen, a 1920 film directed by Arthur Günsburg
• The Missing Rembrandt, a 1932 film directed by Leslie S. Hiscott
• Rembrandt, a 1936 film directed by Alexander Korda
• Rembrandt, a 1940 film
• Rembrandt in de schuilkelder / Rembrandt in the Bunker, a 1941 film directed by Gerard Rutten
• Rembrandt, a 1942 film directed by Hans Steinhoff
• Rembrandt: A Self-Portrait, a 1954 documentary film by Morrie Roizman
• Rembrandt, schilder van de mens / Rembrandt, Painter of Man, a 1957 film directed by Bert Haanstra
• Rembrandt fecit 1669, a 1977 film directed by Jos Stelling
• Rembrandt: The Public Eye and the Private Gaze, a 1992 documentary film by Simon Schama
• Rembrandt, a 1999 film directed by Charles Matton
• Rembrandt: Fathers & Sons [it], a 1999 film directed by David Devine
• Stealing Rembrandt, a 2003 film directed by Jannik Johansen and Anders Thomas Jensen
• Simon Schama’s Power of Art: Rembrandt, a 2006 BBC documentary film series by Simon Schama
• Nightwatching, a 2007 film directed by Peter Greenaway
• Rembrandt’s J’Accuse, a 2008 documentary film by Peter Greenaway
• Rembrandt en ik [nl], a 2011 film directed by Marleen Gorris
• Schama on Rembrandt: Masterpieces of the Late Years, a 2014 documentary film by Simon Schama
• Rembrandt: From the National Gallery, London and Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, a 2014 documentary film by Exhibition on Screen

Selected works[edit]

• The Stoning of Saint Stephen (1625) – Musée des Beaux-Arts, Lyon
• Andromeda Chained to the Rocks (1630) – Mauritshuis, The Hague
• Jacob de Gheyn III (1632) – Dulwich Picture Gallery, London
• Philosopher in Meditation (1632) – The Louvre, Paris
• The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp (1632) – Mauritshuis, The Hague
• Artemisia (1634) – oil on canvas, 142 × 152 cm, Museo del Prado, Madrid
• Descent from the Cross (1634) – oil on canvas, 158 × 117 cm, looted from the Landgrave of Hesse-Kassel (or Hesse-Cassel), Germany in 1806, currently Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg
• Belshazzar’s Feast (1635) – National Gallery, London
• The Prodigal Son in the Tavern (c. 1635) – oil on canvas, 161 × 131 cm Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Dresden
• Danaë (1636 – c. 1643) – Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg
• The Scholar at the Lectern (1641) – Royal Castle in Warsaw, Warsaw
• The Girl in a Picture Frame (1641) – Royal Castle, Warsaw
• The Night Watch, formally The Militia Company of Captain Frans Banning Cocq (1642) – Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam
• Christ Healing the Sick (etching c. 1643, also known as the Hundred Guilder Print), nicknamed for the huge sum paid for it
• Boaz and Ruth (1643) aka The Old Rabbi or Old Man – Woburn Abbey/Gemaldegalerie, Berlin
• The Mill (1645/48) – National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
• Old Man with a Gold Chain («Old Man with a Black Hat and Gorget«) (c. 1631) Art Institute of Chicago
• Susanna and the Elders (1647) – oil on panel, 76 × 91 cm, Gemäldegalerie, Berlin
• Head of Christ (c. 1648–56) – The Philadelphia Museum of Art^[174]
• Aristotle Contemplating a Bust of Homer (1653) – Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
• Bathsheba at Her Bath (1654) – The Louvre, Paris
• Christ Presented to the People (Ecce Homo) (1655) – Drypoint, Birmingham Museum of Art
• Selfportrait (1658) – Frick Collection, New York
• The Three Crosses (1660) Etching, fourth state
• Ahasuerus and Haman at the Feast of Esther (1660) – Pushkin Museum, Moscow
• The Conspiracy of Claudius Civilis (1661) – Nationalmuseum, Stockholm (Claudius Civilis led a Dutch revolt against the Romans) (most of the cut up painting is lost, only the central part still exists)
• Portrait of Dirck van Os (1662) – Joslyn Art Museum, Omaha, Nebraska
• Syndics of the Drapers’ Guild (Dutch De Staalmeesters, 1662) – Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam
• The Jewish Bride (1665) – Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam
• Haman before Esther (1665) – National Museum of Art of Romania, Bucharest^[175]
• The Entombment Sketch (c. 1639, reworked c. 1654) – oil on oak panel, Hunterian Museum and Art Gallery, Glasgow
• Saul and David (c. 1660–1665) – Mauritshuis, The Hague
• Portrait of an Old Man (1645) – Calouste Gulbenkian Museum, Lisbon
• Pallas Athena (c.1657) – Calouste Gulbenkian Museum, Lisbon

Exhibitions[edit]

• Sept–Oct 1898: Rembrandt Tentoonstelling (Rembrandt Exhibition), Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.^[176]
• Jan–Feb 1899: Rembrandt Tentoonstelling (Rembrandt Exhibition), Royal Academy, London, England.^[176]
• 21 April 2011 – 18 July 2011: Rembrandt and the Face of Jesus, Musée du Louvre.^[177]
• 16 September 2013 – 14 November 2013: Rembrandt: The Consummate Etcher, Syracuse University Art Galleries.^[178]
• 19 May 2014 – 27 June 2014: From Rembrandt to Rosenquist: Works on Paper from the NAC’s Permanent Collection, National Arts Club.^[179]
• 19 October 2014 – 4 January 2015: Rembrandt, Rubens, Gainsborough and the Golden Age of Painting in Europe, Jule Collins Smith Museum of Art.^[180]
• 15 October 2014 – 18 January 2015: Rembrandt: The Late Works, The National Gallery, London.^[181]
• 12 February 2015 – 17 May 2015: Late Rembrandt, The Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.^[182]
• 16 September 2018 – 6 January 2019: Rembrandt – Painter as Printmaker, Denver Art Museum, Denver.^[183]
• 24 Aug 2019 – 1 December 2019: Leiden circa 1630: Rembrandt Emerges, Agnes Etherington Art Centre, Kingston, Ontario.^[184]
• 4 October 2019 – 2 February 2020: Rembrandt’s Light, Dulwich Picture Gallery, London.^[185]
• 18 February 2020 – 30 August 2020: Rembrandt and Amsterdam portraiture, 1590–1670 , Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid.^[186]
• 10 August 2020 – 1 November 2020: Young Rembrandt, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford.^[187]

Paintings[edit]

Self-portraits[edit]

• 

• 

  Self-Portrait with Velvet Beret and Furred Mantle (1634)

• 

• 

• 

  Self-portrait (1655) an oil on walnut portrait cut down in size at. Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna

• 

• 

• 

  Self-portrait (1669)

Other paintings[edit]

• 

  Bust of an old man with a fur hat, (1630), a painting of Rembrandt’s father

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

  Portrait of Aeltje Uylenburgh (1632) at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston

• 

• 

  Portrait of Saskia van Uylenburgh (c. 1633–34)

• 

• 

  Susanna (1636)

• 

• 

  Danaë (c. 1636-43) at Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg, Russia

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

  An Old Man in Red (c. 1652–54)

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

  Woman in a Doorway (1657–1658)

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

Drawings and etchings[edit]

• Rembrandt drawings at the Albertina

• 

  Self-portrait, c. 1628–29, pen and brush and ink on paper

• 

  Self-portrait in a cap, with eyes wide open, 1630, etching and burin

• 

  An elephant, 1637, drawing in black chalk on paper, Albertina, Austria

• 

  Christ and the woman taken in adultery, c. 1639–41, drawing in ink, Louvre

• 

  The Windmill, 1641, etching

• 

• 

  Two Old Men in Conversation /Two Jews in Discussion, Walking, year unknown, black chalk and brown ink on paper, Teylers Museum

• 

  A child being taught to walk (c. 1635). David Hockney said: «I think it’s the greatest drawing ever done… It’s a magnificent drawing, magnificent.»^[94]

• 

  A young woman sleeping (c. 1654). Shows Rembrandt’s calligraphic-style draughtsmanship.^[97][98]

Notes[edit]

References[edit]

Works cited[edit]

Further reading[edit]

External links[edit]

• A biography of the artist Rembrandt Harmensz. van Rijn from the National Gallery, London
• Works and literature on Rembrandt from Pubhist.com
• The Drawings of Rembrandt: a revision of Otto Benesch’s catalogue raisonné by Martin Royalton-Kisch (in progress)
• Rembrandt’s house in Amsterdam Site of the Rembrandt House Museum in Amsterdam, with images of many of his etchings
• 114 artworks by or after Rembrandt at the Art UK site
• Works by or about Rembrandt at Internet Archive
• Rembrandt van Rijn, General Resources
• The transparent connoisseur 3: the 30 million pound question by Gary Schwartz
• Rembrandt
• The Rembrandt Database research data on the paintings, including the full contents of the first volumes of A Corpus of Rembrandt Paintings by the Rembrandt Research Project
• Die Urkunden über Rembrandt by C. Hofstede de Groot (1906).

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Альтернатива, Рерих, пакет, атеизм, интервенция, деканат, темп, диспансер, термин,Сервантес,шинель, эстетика, шоссе, партер,кодекс, энергия, демократия, схема, гротекс, интервидение, потенциальный,сентенция, отель, антенна, декада, академия, тенденция, экспресс, музей, тембер, деспот,антитеза, Одесса, девиз, Ремарк, туннель, Магдебург, фанера, Рембрандт, апартеид, интернационал, претензия, шедевр, тезис, миллионер, интерпретация, стресс, Брехт, интервьюер, протекция, демон.

Ответ справочной службы русского языка

Воспользуйтесь электронными словарями «Грамоты.Ру»!

На какой слог падает ударение в фамилии Рембрандт в русском языке?

Ответ справочной службы русского языка

Верно: Рембрандт.

Здравствуйте, как правильно ставить ударение в фамилии Рембрант? Спасибо.

Ответ справочной службы русского языка

Ударение в имени художника падает на первый слог.

Скажите, пожалуйста, как правильно произносится фамилия — РЕмбрандт или РембрАндт

Ответ справочной службы русского языка

См. ответ № 205285 .

Здравствуйте! Скажите, пожалуйста, на какой слог падает ударение в фамилии Рембрант. Спасибо.

Ответ справочной службы русского языка

На первый: _РЕмбрандт_.

У этого термина существуют и другие значения, см. Рембрандт.

Ре́мбрандт Ха́рменс ван Рейн (нидерл. Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn, нидерландский: [ˈrɛmbrɑnt ˈɦɑrmə(n)soːn vɑn ˈrɛin] ( слушать));
(15 июля 1606 — 4 октября 1669) — голландский художник, гравёр, великий мастер светотени, крупнейший представитель золотого века голландской живописи^[9]. Он сумел воплотить в своих произведениях весь спектр человеческих переживаний с такой эмоциональной насыщенностью, которой до него не знало изобразительное искусство^[10]. Работы Рембрандта, чрезвычайно разнообразные по жанровой принадлежности, открывают зрителю вневременной духовный мир человеческих переживаний и чувств^[11].

Биография

Годы ученичества

Рембрандт Харменсзон («сын Хармена») ван Рейн родился 15 июля 1606 года^[12] (по некоторым данным, в 1607) в многодетной семье состоятельного владельца мельницы Хармена Герритсзона ван Рейна в Лейдене. Отец художника принадлежал к Голландской реформатской церкви. Мать была католичкой^[11].

Сам Рембрандт был, скорее всего, протестантом и всех своих детей крестил в протестантских церквях.

В Лейдене Рембрандт посещал латинскую школу при университете, но наибольший интерес проявлял к живописи. В 13 лет его отдали учиться изобразительному искусству к лейденскому историческому живописцу Якобу ван Сваненбюрху. Исследователям не удалось найти работы Рембрандта, относящиеся к этому периоду, поэтому вопрос о влиянии Сваненбюрха на становление творческой манеры Рембрандта остаётся открытым: слишком мало известно сегодня об этом лейденском художнике.

В 1623 году Рембрандт учился в Амстердаме у Питера Ластмана, прошедшего стажировку в Италии и специализировавшегося на исторических, мифологических и библейских сюжетах^[11]. Вернувшись в 1627 году в Лейден, Рембрандт вместе с другом Яном Ливенсом открыл собственную мастерскую и начал набирать учеников. За несколько лет он приобрёл широкую известность.

Версия о происхождении

В 1635 г. Рембрандт рисует картину «Армянский проповедник» (Rembrandt  Jan Uytenbogaert, Arminian Preacher, 1635, изображение 22,8 см х 18,6 см)^{[13][14][15][16]}. В своей работе «Рембрандт» (1956 г.) немецкий историк Йоганнес Яхн пишет, что имя голландского художника Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn переводится как «сын армянина из Рейна» («Армензон» «ван Рейн»). «Кто он по национальности, если не армянин?»^[17][18].

Влияние Ластмана и караваджистов

Ластмановское пристрастие к пестроте и детальность в исполнении^[9] оказало огромное влияние на молодого художника. Оно явственно сквозит в его первых сохранившихся произведениях — «Избиении святого Стефана» (1625), «Сцене из древней истории» (1626) и «Крещении евнуха» (1626)^[11]. В сравнении с его зрелыми работами они необычайно красочны, художник стремится тщательно выписать каждую деталь материального мира^[10], как можно достовернее передать экзотическую обстановку библейской истории^[11]. Почти все герои предстают перед зрителем наряженными в причудливые восточные наряды, блистают драгоценностями, что создаёт атмосферу мажорности, парадности, праздничности («Аллегория музыки», 1626; «Давид перед Саулом», 1627).

Итоговые произведения периода — «Товит и Анна», «Валаам и ослица» — отражают не только богатую фантазию художника, но и его стремление как можно выразительнее передать драматичные переживания своих героев. Подобно другим мастерам барокко, он начинает постигать значение резко вылепленной светотени для передачи эмоций^[11]. Его учителями в отношении работы со светом были утрехтские караваджисты^[11], но ещё в большей степени он ориентировался на произведения Адама Эльсхаймера — немца, работавшего в Италии^[11]. Наиболее караваджистские по исполнению полотна Рембрандта — «Притча о неразумном богаче» (1627), «Симеон и Анна в Храме» (1628), «Христос в Эммаусе» (1629).

К этой группе примыкает картина «Художник в своей мастерской» (1628; возможно, это автопортрет), на котором художник запечатлел себя в мастерской в момент созерцания собственного творения. Холст, над которым ведётся работа, вынесен на первый план картины; в сравнении с ним сам автор кажется карликом^[11].

Мастерская в Лейдене

Одним из неразрешённых вопросов творческой биографии Рембрандта является его художественная перекличка с Ливенсом. Работая бок о бок, они не раз брались за один и тот же сюжет, как, например, «Самсон и Далила» (1628/1629) или «Воскрешение Лазаря» (1631). Отчасти оба тянулись за Рубенсом, который слыл тогда лучшим художником всей Европы^[11], иногда Рембрандт заимствовал художественные находки Ливенса, иногда дело было ровно наоборот^[11]. По этой причине разграничение работ Рембрандта и Ливенса 1628—1632 годов представляет известные сложности для искусствоведов^[11]. Среди других известных его работ — «Валаамова ослица» (1626 г).

В 1629 году художника заметил секретарь принца Оранского Константин Гюйгенс (отец Христиана Гюйгенса) — известный в то время поэт и меценат. В одном из писем того времени Гюйгенс превозносит Ливенса и Рембрандта как многообещающих молодых художников^[11], а полотно Рембрандта «Иуда возвращает 30 сребреников» он сравнивает с лучшими произведениями Италии и даже античности^[11]. Это Гюйгенс помог Рембрандту связаться с богатыми клиентами и заказал ему несколько религиозных полотен для принца Оранского.

Выработка собственного стиля

В 1631 году Рембрандт перебрался в Амстердам, где свойственная эстетике барокко динамичность и внешняя патетика полотен^[9] сыскали ему множество состоятельных почитателей, подобно Гюйгенсу увидевших в нём нового Рубенса. Год спустя Ливенс закрыл лейденскую мастерскую и уехал в Англию, где попал под влияние ван Дейка, потом, до возвращения на родину в 1644 году, работал в Антверпене^[11].

Период переезда в Амстердам ознаменовался в творческой биографии Рембрандта созданием множества этюдов мужских и женских голов^[11], в которых он исследует своеобразие каждой модели, экспериментирует с подвижной мимикой лиц. Эти небольшие произведения, впоследствии ошибочно принимавшиеся за изображения отца и матери художника, стали настоящей школой Рембрандта-портретиста^[11]. Именно портретная живопись позволяла в то время художнику привлечь заказы состоятельных амстердамских бюргеров и тем самым добиться коммерческого успеха.

В первые амстердамские годы видное место в творчестве Рембрандта занимает жанр автопортрета. Изображая себя в фантастических одеяниях и замысловатых позах, он намечает новые пути развития своего искусства. Иногда пожилые персонажи этюдов, наряженные художником в роскошные восточные костюмы, преображаются его воображением в библейских персонажей^[11]; таков задумчивый «Иеремия, оплакивающий разрушение Иерусалима» (1630). Для штатгальтера Фридриха-Генриха Оранского он создаёт парные полотна «Воздвижение креста» (1633) и «Снятие с креста» (1632/1633), вдохновлённые многофигурными гравюрами Рубенса^[11].

Успех в Амстердаме

Слава о Рембрандте как о незаурядном мастере распространилась по Амстердаму после завершения им группового портрета «Урок анатомии доктора Тульпа» (1632), на котором внимательные хирурги не были выстроены в параллельные ряды обращённых к зрителю голов, как то было принято в портретной живописи того времени, а строго распределены в пирамидальной композиции, позволившей психологически объединить всех действующих лиц в единую группу^[11]. Богатство мимики каждого лица и драматическое использование светотени подводит итог под годами экспериментирования, свидетельствуя о наступлении творческой зрелости художника.

Первые годы в Амстердаме были самыми счастливыми в жизни Рембрандта. Состоявшийся в 1634 году брак с Саскией ван Эйленбюрх открывает перед художником двери особняков зажиточных бюргеров, к числу которых принадлежал её отец — бургомистр Леувардена^[11]. Заказы сыплются к нему один за другим; не менее полусотни портретов датируются именно первыми годами пребывания Рембрандта в Амстердаме^[11]. Особенно благоволили к нему консервативные меннониты. Немало шума наделал его двойной портрет меннонитского проповедника Корнелиса Ансло, который воспел в стихах сам Вондел^[11].

Материальное благосостояние Рембрандта позволило ему приобрести собственный особняк (см. Дом-музей Рембрандта), который он наполнял скупленными им у антикваров предметами искусства^[10]. Это были не только картины итальянских мастеров и гравюры, но также античная скульптура, оружие, музыкальные инструменты^[10]. Для изучения великих предшественников ему не было нужды выезжать из Амстердама, ибо в городе тогда можно было увидеть такие шедевры, как тициановский «Портрет Джероламо (?) Барбариго» и портрет Бальтазаре Кастильоне кисти Рафаэля^[11].

К числу наиболее значительных портретов тех лет принадлежат изображения Саскии — иногда в домашней обстановке, лежащей в постели, иногда в роскошных одеяниях (кассельский портрет, 1634) и театрализованных обличьях («Саския в образе Флоры», 1634). В 1641 году у них родился сын Титус; ещё трое детей умерли в младенчестве. Избыток жизненных сил художника в годы брака с Саскией с наибольшей бравурностью выражен в картине «Блудный сын в таверне» (1635). Иконография этой прославленной работы восходит к моралистическим изображениям разврата блудного сына из библейской притчи^[11].

Саския умерла через год после рождения сына, и в жизни Рембрандта начался период непрерывных личных утрат^[10].

Диалог с итальянцами

На творческий диалог Рембрандта с великими итальянскими художниками указывают не одни только портретные работы, но и многофигурные картины на мифологические и библейские темы, отразившие заботу художника о внешних эффектах и в этом отношении созвучные произведениям мастеров барочной Италии^[10].

Знаменитая «Даная» (1636/1643) вся лучится светом^[10]. «Похищение Европы» (1632) и «Похищение Ганимеда» (1635) — также обычные сюжеты итальянской живописи — совершенно преображены Рембрандтом путём введения, в первом случае, голландского пейзажа, во втором — иронической трактовкой легендарного юноши-красавца как младенца с искажённым гримасой ужаса лицом^[11].

Как и в годы работы с Ластманом, творческое воображение Рембрандта требует библейских сюжетов с относительно неразработанной иконографией. В «Пире Валтасара» (1635) на лицах персонажей картины написан неподдельный ужас, впечатление тревоги усиливается драматичным освещением сцены. Не менее динамично «Жертвоприношение Авраама» (1635) — застывший в воздухе нож придаёт сцене непосредственность фотографического изображения^[11]. Более поздняя версия этой композиции из Мюнхена — пример того, как качественно копировали картины Рембрандта его подмастерья^[11].

Эффекты света и тени Рембрандт разрабатывал и в офортах («Христос перед Пилатом», 1636), которым нередко предшествовали многочисленные подготовительные рисунки. На протяжении всей последующей жизни офорты приносили Рембрандту не меньший доход, чем собственно живопись^[11]. Как офортист он особенно славился применением сухой иглы, динамичного штриха и техники затяжки^[9].

«Ночной дозор»

В 1642 году Рембрандт получил заказ на один из шести групповых портретов амстердамских мушкетёров для нового здания Стрелкового общества; два других заказа достались его ученикам. При создании этой четырёхметровой картины — самого масштабного из своих произведений^[11] — Рембрандт порвал с канонами голландской портретной живописи, за два столетия предсказав художественные находки XIX века — эпохи реализма и импрессионизма. Модели были изображены весьма непосредственно, в движении, что вовсе не понравилось заказчикам, многие из которых оказались при этом задвинутыми на задний план:

Монументальное создание Рембрандта, запечатлевшее внезапное выступление в поход стрелковой роты, возглавляемой её командирами, решено им как массовая сцена, пронизанная движением толпы конкретных и безымянных персонажей и построенная на мерцающем контрасте ярко освещенных цветовых пятен и затенённых зон. Создающая впечатление разнобоя и напряжённости случайность запечатленной на полотне ситуации вместе с тем проникнута торжественностью и героическим подъёмом, сближается по своему звучанию с исторической композицией^[10].

Столь смелое сочетание группового портрета с военными воспоминаниями Нидерландской революции отпугнуло некоторых заказчиков. Биографы Рембрандта спорят о том, насколько неуспех «Ночного дозора» (именно такое ошибочное название впоследствии получила картина, до реставрации 1940-х гг. скрытая под потемневшим лаком и копотью) повлиял на дальнейшую карьеру художника^[19]. По всей вероятности, распространённая легенда о провале этой работы не имеет под собой серьёзных оснований^[19]. Конспирологическая версия истории «Ночного дозора» приведена в фильмах британского режиссёра Питера Гринуэя «Ночной дозор» (2007)^[20] и «Рембрандт. Я обвиняю!» (2008)^[21].

Каковы бы ни были причины охлаждения амстердамской публики к Рембрандту, результатом перемены во вкусах стало угасание его славы и постепенное обнищание. После «Ночного дозора» в мастерской Рембрандта остаются единичные ученики. Его прежние подмастерья, позаимствовав и развив какую-либо одну черту раннего Рембрандта, становятся более удачливыми и востребованными художниками, чем их учитель. Особенно характерен в этом отношении Говерт Флинк, в совершенстве освоивший внешнюю бравурность динамичных рембрандтовских полотен 1630-х гг. Лейденец Герард Доу — один из первых учеников Рембрандта — всю жизнь оставался под влиянием ластмановской эстетики полотен вроде «Аллегории музыки» 1626 года^[11]. Фабрициус, который работал в мастерской около 1640 года, охотно экспериментировал с перспективой и разрабатывал высветленные фоны, что принесло ему незаурядный успех в Делфте^[22].

То, что в продолжение 1640-х годов от Рембрандта отворачиваются заказчики и уходят ученики, объясняется не столько неоднозначной оценкой «Ночного дозора», сколько общим поворотом живописной моды в сторону скрупулёзной детализации, к которой сам Рембрандт был наиболее склонен в ранние годы^[11]. Логика творческого развития вела художника в прямо противоположном направлении. С годами он стал отдавать предпочтение смелым мазкам кисти и резким контрастам света и тени, скрадывающей почти все фоновые детали^[11].

Переходный период

Сведений о частной жизни Рембрандта в 1640-е годы в документах сохранилось мало^[11]. Из учеников этого периода известен только Николас Мас из Дордрехта^[11]. Видимо, художник продолжал жить на широкую ногу, как прежде. Семейство покойной Саскии высказывало озабоченность тем, как он распорядился её приданым^[11]. Няня Титуса, Гертье Диркс, подала на него в суд за нарушение обещания жениться; ради улаживания этого инцидента художнику пришлось раскошелиться^[11].

В конце 1640-х Рембрандт сошёлся со своей молодой служанкой Хендрикье Стоффелс, образ которой мелькает во многих портретных работах этого периода: «Флора» (1654), «Купающаяся женщина» (1654), «Хендрикье у окна» (1655). Приходской совет осудил Хендрикье за «греховное сожительство», когда в 1654 году у неё с художником родилась дочь Корнелия. В эти годы Рембрандт отходит от тем, имеющих грандиозное национальное либо общечеловеческое звучание^[11]. Живописные работы этого периода немногочисленны^[11].

• Портреты семьи Рембрандта

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  Саския в красной шляпе (1633/1634)

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  Титус в красном берете (1658)

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  Гертье Диркс? (1644)

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  Хендрикье Стоффелс (1655)

Художник подолгу работает над гравированными портретами бургомистра Яна Сикса (1647) и других влиятельных бюргеров. Все известные ему приёмы и техники гравировки пошли в ход при изготовлении тщательно проработанного офорта «Христос, исцеляющий больных», более известного как «Лист в сто гульденов», — именно за такую огромную для XVII века цену он был однажды продан. Над этим офортом, поражающим тонкостью светотеневой игры, он работал семь лет, с 1643 по 1649 год^[11]. В 1661 году продолжилась работа над созданным в 1653 году офортом «Три креста» (не закончен).

В годы жизненных невзгод внимание художника привлекают пейзажи с нахмуренными облаками, шквальным ветром и прочими атрибутами романтически взволнованной природы в традициях Рубенса и Сегерса^[11]. К жемчужинам рембрандтовского реализма принадлежит «Зимний пейзаж» 1646 года. Однако вершиной мастерства Рембрандта-пейзажиста были не столько живописные работы, сколько рисунки и офорты, такие как «Мельница» (1641) и «Три дерева» (1643)^[11]. Он осваивает и другие новые для себя жанры — натюрморт (с дичью и освежёванными тушами) и конный портрет (хотя, по общему мнению, лошади Рембрандту никогда не удавались)^[23][24].

Поэтическое истолкование в эти годы получают сцены повседневной домашней жизни^[10], каковы два «Святых семейства» 1645 и 1646 годов. Вкупе с «Поклонением пастухов» (1646) и «Отдыхом на пути в Египет» (1647) они позволяют говорить о наметившейся у Рембрандта тенденции к идеализации патриархального уклада семейной жизни^[9]. Эти работы согреты тёплыми чувствами родственной близости, любви, сострадания^[10]. Светотень в них достигает невиданного прежде богатства оттенков. Колорит особенно тёплый, с преобладанием мерцающих красных и золотисто-коричневых тонов^[9].

Поздний Рембрандт

В 1653 году, испытывая материальные трудности, художник передал почти всё своё имущество сыну Титусу^[11], после чего в 1656 году заявил о банкротстве. После распродажи в 1657—1658 годах дома и имущества (сохранился интересный каталог художественного собрания Рембрандта)^[11] художник перебрался на окраину Амстердама, в еврейский квартал, где провёл остаток жизни^[9]. Самым близким к нему человеком в те годы, по-видимому, оставался Титус; именно его изображения наиболее многочисленны. На одних он предстаёт принцем из волшебной сказки, на других — сотканным из солнечных лучей ангелом^[10]. Смерть Титуса в 1668 году стала для художника одним из последних ударов судьбы; его самого не стало годом позже.

Отличительная черта рембрандтовского творчества 1650-х годов — ясность и монументальность крупнофигурных композиций^[9]. Характерна в этом отношении работа «Аристотель с бюстом Гомера», исполненная в 1653 году для сицилийского аристократа Антонио Руффо и проданная в 1961 году его наследниками на аукционе Метрополитен-музею за рекордную на тот момент сумму в два с лишним миллиона долларов^[25]. Аристотель погружён в глубокое раздумье; внутренний свет, кажется, исходит от его лица и от бюста Гомера, на который он возложил свою руку^[11].

Если на полотнах 1650-х годов число фигур никогда не превышает трёх, то в последнее десятилетие своей жизни Рембрандт возвращается к созданию многофигурных композиций. В двух случаях это были крупные и престижные заказы. Монументальная героическая картина «Заговор Юлия Цивилиса» (1661) создавалась для новой Амстердамской ратуши, но по каким-то причинам не удовлетворила заказчиков и не была оплачена^[11]. Фрагмент картины, сохранившийся в Стокгольме, поражает суровым реализмом и неожиданными вспышками светлых красок на фоне окружающей тьмы^[10]. Групповой портрет «Синдики» (1662), несмотря на естественность поз, оживлённость мимики и спаянность композиционного решения, представляет собой шаг назад по сравнению с бескомпромиссным натурализмом «Ночного дозора»^[11]. Зато все требования заказчиков были выполнены.

Последние два десятилетия жизни Рембрандта стали вершиной его мастерства как портретиста^[10]. Моделями выступают не только товарищи художника (Николас Брейнинг, 1652; Герард де Лересс, 1665; Йеремиас де Деккер, 1666), но и безвестные солдаты, старики и старухи — все те, кто, подобно автору, прошёл через годы горестных испытаний^[10]. Их лица и руки озарены внутренним духовным светом. Парадный портрет Яна Сикса (1654), натягивающего на руку перчатку, выделяется редкостной гармонией колорита, широтой пастозных мазков. Внутреннюю эволюцию художника передаёт череда автопортретов, раскрывающая зрителю мир его сокровенных переживаний. К серии автопортретов примыкает вереница изображений умудрённых жизнью апостолов; нередко в лице апостола угадываются черты самого художника^[11].

• Рембрандтовские старики

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• 

• 

Последние работы

Художественный гений Рембрандта развивался по восходящей^[10]. Его последние работы представляют собой уникальное явление в истории живописи. Секрет их липких, как бы стекающих по холсту красок до сих пор не разгадан. Фигуры монументальны и нарочито приближены к передней плоскости холста. Художник останавливается на редких библейских сюжетах, поиск соответствий которым в Библии до сих пор занимает исследователей его творчества. Его влекут такие моменты бытия, когда человеческие переживания проявляются с наибольшей силой^[10].

Глубокое драматическое напряжение свойственно таким работам, как «Артаксеркс, Аман и Эсфирь» (1660) и «Отречение апостола Петра» (1660). По технике исполнения им созвучны последние картины, объединённые семейной темой: неоконченное «Возвращение блудного сына»^[26] (1666/1669), семейный портрет из Брауншвейга (1668/1669) и т. н. «Еврейская невеста» (1665). Датировка всех этих произведений условна, обстоятельства их создания окружены тайной. Исследователи с трудом подбирают слова для описания их густых «переливающихся и тлеющих в золотистой мгле красок», нанесённых на холст шпателем, или мастихином^[11]:

Активное действие отсутствует, статичные, внешне сдержанные персонажи, подчас окутанные сиянием парчовых одежд, выступают из окружающего их затенённого пространства. Господствующие темные золотисто-коричневые тона подчиняют себе все краски, среди которых особая роль принадлежит горящим изнутри, подобно тлеющим углям, оттенкам красного. Густые рельефные мазки, пронизанные движением светоносной красочной массы, сочетаются в затенённых зонах с написанными тонким слоем прозрачными лессировками. Фактура красочной поверхности произведений позднего Рембрандта кажется мерцающей драгоценностью. Волнующая человечность его образов отмечена печатью таинственной красоты^[10].

На кёльнском автопортрете 1662 года черты автора искажены горькой усмешкой, а на последних автопортретах 1669 года (галерея Уффици, Лондонская Национальная галерея и Маурицхёйс) он, несмотря на бросающуюся в глаза физическую немощь, спокойно смотрит в лицо судьбе^[10].
Рембрандт скончался 4 октября 1669 года в Амстердаме. Похоронили его в амстердамской церкви Вестеркерк^[11]. За гробом шла только его дочь Корнелия.

Всего за свою жизнь Рембрандт создал около 350 картин, более 100 рисунков и около 300 офортов. Достижения Рембрандта-рисовальщика не уступают его достижениям в области живописи^[10]; особенно ценятся его поздние рисунки, выполненные тростниковым пером^[9].

Проблемы атрибуции

Одной из неразрешимых проблем для исследователя творчества Рембрандта до последнего времени оставалось огромное число копий и реплик с его полотен, которые с незапамятных времён проходили в каталогах под его именем^[27]. Так, например, известно десять версий картины «Иуда возвращает тридцать серебреников», которые невозможно однозначно атрибутировать определённому художнику^[28].

В 1968 году в Амстердаме стартовал исследовательский проект «Рембрандт», поставивший своей целью составление выверенного реестра произведений Рембрандта с использованием новейших методов атрибуции. Заключительный каталог проекта, опубликованный в 2014 году, содержит список из 346 картин, в то время как на начало XX века считалось, что кисти Рембрандта принадлежат около 800 картин^[29]. Например, из 12 картин, выставлявшихся в Собрании Уоллеса под именем великого художника, проект сначала подтвердил рембрандтовское авторство только одной^[30], хотя потом их число увеличилось до пяти.
Что касается картин Рембрандта, выставленных в российских музеях, то в музее имени А. С. Пушкина, согласно каталогу, находится только три произведения Рембрандта, а в Эрмитаже — 14.

Ученики

Посмертная слава

Человечеству понадобилось два столетия, чтобы в полной мере оценить значение творчества Рембрандта. Хотя ещё Джованни Кастильоне и Джованни Баттиста Тьеполо вдохновлялись его офортами^[11], смелость Рембрандта-живописца и меткость его наблюдений в качестве рисовальщика впервые получили признание в XIX веке, когда художники реалистической школы Курбе (а в России — передвижники) противопоставили его глубоко прочувствованную поэзию света и тени беспрекословной чёткости и ясности французского академизма^[31].

Ещё сто лет назад самым большим собранием рембрандтовских полотен мог похвастаться Императорский Эрмитаж^[32], однако в XX веке часть этого собрания была распродана, некоторые картины были переданы в Пушкинский музей, авторство других было оспорено. В течение всего XX века голландцы вели кропотливую работу по скупке полотен Рембрандта и их возвращению на родину; в результате этих усилий наибольшее число картин Рембрандта можно ныне увидеть в амстердамском Рейксмюсеуме^[33]. Одна из центральных площадей Амстердама, Botermarkt, в 1876 году получила современное название Площадь Рембрандта (нидерл. Rembrandtplein) в честь великого художника. В центре площади находится памятник Рембрандту. В амстердамском доме художника с 1911 года также действует музей, где выставлены преимущественно офорты^[34]. В 2009 году именем художника был назван кратер на планете Меркурий, являющийся одним из самых больших в Солнечной системе.

Работники Государственного музея в Амстердаме решили принести искусство Рембрандта поближе к людям. В апреле 2013 года они «оживили» картину «Ночной дозор», создав целый спектакль, и перенесли его действие на территорию большого торгового центра^[35].

31 октября 2013 года в городе Йошкар-Оле (Республика Марий Эл) был установлен бронзовый памятник Рембрандту (скульптор — Андрей Ковальчук).

Рейксмюсеум, художественный музей в Амстердаме, создал картину Рембрандта «Ночной дозор» в гипер-разрешении. Изображение состоит из 528 отдельных фотографий, сделанных в рамках проекта Operation Night Watch^[36].

В литературе

• В 1940 году в журнале «Октябрь» была опубликована драма в стихах Дмитрия Кедрина «Рембрандт». По инициативе редакции Кедрин сократил оригинальный текст драмы. Полный авторский текст был опубликован лишь в 1990 году в авторской книге «Дума о России».
• В 1935 году голландский писатель Тёйн де Фрис (нидерл.  Theun de Vries ) опубликовал свой роман «Рембрандт». Роман не является биографическим. Создавая своё произведение, автор не ставил перед собой задачу дать всеобъемлющую картину жизни и творчества гениального сына своего народа. Писатель задался целью создать образ Рембрандта — человека честного и бескомпромиссного. Поэтому в романе де Фрис обращается к наиболее сложному и трудному периоду в жизни художника, минуя период его молодости, успеха и счастливой любви. В Советском Союзе книга была издана в 1956 году, в год 350-летия со дня рождения Рембрандта ван Рейна (Издательство иностранной литературы, Москва, 1956).
• В 1961 году вышел в свет художественный биографический роман американской писательницы Глэдис Шмитт «Рембрандт». Роман переведён на многие языки мира, в том числе и на русский (изд. АСТ, Москва, 2018 г.).

В кино

• «Рембрандт» / Rembrandt — реж. Александр Корда (Великобритания, 1936). В главной роли Чарльз Лоутон
• «Рембрандт: Портрет 1669» / Rembrandt fecit 1669 — реж. Йос Стеллинг (Нидерланды, 1977). В роли Тон де Кофф.
• «Рембрандт» / Rembrandt — реж. |Шарль Маттон (Германия, Франция, Нидерланды, 1999)
• «Ночной дозор» / Nightwatching — реж. Питер Гринуэй (Великобритания, Франция, Канада, Германия, Польша, 2007). В роли Мартин Фримен
• «Рембрандт. Я обвиняю!» / Rembrandt’s J’accuse — реж. Питер Гринуэй (Великобритания, 2008). В роли Мартин Фримен

См. также

• Офорты Рембрандта

Примечания

Литература

• Верхарн Эмиль. Рембрандт = Rembrandt: Его жизнь и худож. деятельность / Эмиль Верхарн; Пер. с фр. Е. Н. К. — Санкт-Петербург : Акц. о-во типогр. дела, [1913]. — 66 с.
• Верцман И. Рембрандт и реализм // Невежина В. М. Рембрандт. Л., 1935. С. 119—137.
• Григорьев Р. Рембрандт-Гравер. СПб.: Государственный Эрмитаж, 2006. — 48 с., ISBN 5-93572-195-3.
• Григорьев Р. Гравюры Рембрандта из коллекции Д. А. Ровинского в собрании Эрмитажа. СПб. : Изд-во Гос. Эрмитажа, 2012. — 760 с.
• Даниэль С. М. Рембрандт: [Альбом]. — СПб.: Аврора, [2002] (Серия: Великие мастера живописи). — 158, [1] с.: ил., цв. ил. — ISBN 5 7300 0696 9
• Декарг П.^{<span title=»Статья «Декарг, Пьер» в русском разделе отсутствует»>ru</span>}_fr. Рембрандт / Пер. Е. Колодочкина. — М.:: Молодая гвардия, 2010. — 283 с. — (Жизнь замечательных людей). — ISBN 978-5-235-03279-8.
• Доброклонский М. В. Рембрандт. — Ленинград: Издательство Гос. Эрмитажа, 1937. — 101 с.
• Егорова К. Портрет в творчестве Рембрандта. Москва : Искусство, 1975. — 234 с.
• Исраэлс Иосеф. Рембрандт / Пер. Е. Боратынской. — Москва [и др.]: Книгоиздательство Ю. И. Лепковского, 1910. — 80 с.
• Рембрандт Гарменс ван Рейн. Картины художника в музеях Советского Союза: альбом репродукций и каталог. Ленинград : Аврора, 1971—177 с.
• Ротенберг Е. Западноевропейская живопись XVII века. Тематические принципы. М., 1989. 286 с.
• Benesch O. Rembrandt: Étude biographique et critique. Genève: Skira, 1957—156 с.
• Bikker J., Weber G., Wieseman M., Hinterding E. Late Rembrandt. Published on the occasion of the Exhibition «Rembrandt: the late works» (The National gallery, Londoon). London: National gallery, 2014. — 326 c.
• Schapelhouman M. Rembrandt and the art of drawing. Amsterdam: Waanders Rijksmuseum, 2006. — 111 с.
• Slatkes L. Rembrandt and Persia. New York: Abaris books, 1983. — 177 с.
• Wencelius L. Calvin et Rembrandt : Étude comparative de la philosophie de l’art de Rembrandt et de l’esthétique de Calvin. Paris: Les belles-lettres, 1937. — 239 c.
• Williams J. Rembrandts’ women. Publication on the occasion of the Exhibition. Edinburgh — London: National gallery of Scotland, 2001. — 272 с.

Аудиокниги

• Гулиа Г. Д. Рембрандт. Роман (6 ч. 56′). Читает Светлана Репина.
• В 1993 году вышел составленный специально для Всероссийского общества слепых обзор Анатолия Вержбицкого «Творчество Рембрандта» с подробнейшим описанием наиболее известных картин и живописных приёмов мастера (37 ч. 43′). Читают Ирина Ерисанова и Илья Прудовский.

Ссылки

• Офорты Рембрандта из коллекции Д. А. Ровинского в собрании Государственного Эрмитажа. Выставка в Государственном Эрмитаже 17.03.2006 — 11.06.2006
• Русскоязычный сайт о жизни и творчестве Рембрандта
• Русскоязычный сайт о Рембрандте с анализом основных картин
• Полный каталог картин Рембрандта по данным исследовательского проекта «Рембрандт»
• Полный каталог картин Рембрандта по данным исследовательского проекта «Рембрандт» на русском в хорошем разрешении
• Рембрандт в Web Gallery of Art  (англ.)
• Голландский живописец Рембрандт
• Дмитриевская Л. Н. Образ книги в творчестве Рембрандта

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