Rembrandt and Self-Portraiture

Rembrandt and Self-Portraiture

Introduction

The most versatile, innovative, and influential Dutch painter of the 17th century; known primarily by his given name. This usage, initiated by Rembrandt with his signature, marks his stature in the history of Western art, which introduced it for the High Renaissance artists Michelangelo, Raphael, and Titian.

Rembrandt was born in Leiden to well-off, Protestant mill owners. He attended Leiden's Latin school and, briefly in 1620, its university, but then apprenticed for about three years to the history painter Jacob van Swanenburgh, who must have taught him basic workshop practice. More indicative of Rembrandt's ambitions was his apprenticeship in 1624 with Pieter Lastman, who was the leading history painter of his generation in Amsterdam. From Lastman, Rembrandt learned a theatrical and colorful mode of history painting dependent on clear compositions and gestures as well as evocative costumes and settings. Back in Leiden Rembrandt painted his first independent works in this style (The Stoning of S. Stephen, 1625; Lyon, Mus. des Beaux-Arts). But within two years his palette became more monochrome, his attention to surface texture more precise, his light more nuanced in its range from deep darkness to daylight (The Miser from the Parable, 1627; Berlin, Gemäldegal.). Rembrandt forged this mode in creative competition with Jan Lievens, synthesizing elements of Lastman's style, of monochrome still-life painting popular in Leiden, and of Caravaggist chiaroscuro practiced in Utrecht.

Discussion

Rembrandt soon received critical attention from Constantine Huygens, the polymathic secretary to Stadholder Frederick Henry. About 1630, Huygens wrote glowingly of Rembrandt's Judas Returning the Silver Pieces (1629; priv. coll.), singling out the emotional characterization of Judas. Rembrandt was at the time experimenting with facial expressions, producing small etchings of his face in emotional states ranging from curiosity and annoyance to anger and surprise. These reproducible works also let Rembrandt advertise his ability to render the human passions, a capacity essential for history painting as well as portraiture. Although Rembrandt tried his hand at almost every pictorial subject, these two genres became the mainstay of his career. In the early 1630s, through Huygens's mediation, Rembrandt received both portrait and history commissions from the Stadholder and his wife.

Despite the promise of his early career, Rembrandt must have recognized the prospects of Amsterdam, the liveliest port and financial centre of northern Europe. At the encouragement of Hendrick Uylenburgh, an art dealer and broker of portrait commissions, he moved to Amsterdam c. 1631-2. He immediately received the prestigious commission for The Anatomy Lesson of Dr Tulp (1632; The Hague, Mauritshuis), a group portrait of Amsterdam's college of surgeons. By arranging the likenesses into the story of Dr Tulp's demonstration of the workings of the human hand, Rembrandt diverged from the static tradition of such portraits. Rembrandt's portraits of individual sitters are similarly energetic, emphasizing faces, hands, and dynamic silhouettes at the expense of costumes and settings. They made him the city's leading portraitist until c. 1650.

Rembrandt's large history paintings of the 1630s became more spectacular. Composed along sweeping diagonals, they acknowledge the Italian and Flemish Baroque ...