A Rembrandt Self-portrait and tronie (original) (raw)
2003, Face to Face, Exhibition catalog
Entry for exhibition catalog dedicated to portraiture held at the Snite Museum of Art, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, Indiana in 2003. The etching, Self-Portrait with a Plumed Cap, 1638, is placed into the contexts of 17th-century tronies, Rembrandt's relationship to the court at The Hague, and the artist's sense of his place in the history of printmaking in the Netherlands.
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Rembrandt van Rijn (1606-1669) was a Dutch baroque painter, sketcher, and printmaker who was not only one of the most prominent artist of all time, but made the foremost self-portraits of any other known artist.1 In his life Rembrandt suffered from a lot of misfortune than any other ordinary man. To be sure, it is no longer the fashion for critics to attack him both as artist and human being.2 Today the inquiry is done by writers of romantic biographies and films who mean to honor him. Their revised standard version of Rembrandt's life runs approximately as follows: "The child of poor, ignorant Dutch peasants, Rembrandt was born with near-miraculous skill in art. As an uneducated young man, he established himself in Amsterdam, and married with a beautiful, wealthy, sympathetic girl named Saskia, and enjoyed a short period of prosperity and fame. However, because man of genius are always misunderstood by the public, fate snatched him by the throat. The important burghers of the city, who may not have known much about art but knew what they liked, gave him an enormous commission-The Night Watch-in which the burghers were to be painted in traditional postures and lights. Rembrandt responded with a masterpiece-a fact unfortunately apparent only to him and his wife. Everyone else, from the burgers to the herring-peddlers, thought the painting was dreadful. Rembrandt's patrons hooted in rage and derision, demanding changes that the artist, secure in the knowledge that posterity would vindicate him, stubbornly refused to make."3 At this point, because it is not customary for a genius to suffer a single setback but to be overwhelmed by multiple catastrophes, Rembrandt's wife died, the Night Watch was ripped from the wall and placed in some indecorous location, his friends deserted him, and he was 1J.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, 1949
This essay draws from the writings of authors such as Franciscus Junius and Samuel van Hoogstraten to suggest that Rembrandt associated his artistic identity with the ancient Batavians, purported forefathers of the Dutch. Tracing the etymological association of 'schild' (shield) and 'schilder' (painter) and the fascination with Teutonic lore in Rembrandt's milieu, the author proposes an analogy between Rembrandt's increasingly blunt, direct manner of painting and the plainness of manner and speech associated with the Batavians. This analysis sheds new light on Rembrandt's Conspiracy of the Batavians under Claudius Civilis (Stockholm, Nationalmuseum), painted for the Amsterdam Town Hall.
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