Rembrandt [antikvár]

INTRODUCTION Rembrandt, the man, spent his life pursuing the expression of values in which he passionately believed. Rembrandt, the 'artist of genius', has been popularly misconceived as an enigma. This is basically false in that the only perceivable enigma is the one Rembrandt himself recognized: how to ask questions to which there are no answers; how to go on putting the questions in a different way in the full recognition of the limitations of human understanding. This is the path he took, admitting that he was neither an angel nor a sinner. Rembrandt's passion was a passion for honesty in terms of himself and integrity in terms of his art. This said, Rembrandt was a man who possessed good and bad qualities. His strength lay in his acceptance of this and his desire to overcome his weaknesses. It is probably true for example that, after the death of his wife Saskia, he rejected a woman whom he had promised to marry. His companion for a while, she did not respond well to his denials and threatened to bring him down with her accusations. Whatever the details of this episode, suffice it to say that Rembrandt was prepared to pay the price of his unethical behaviour in order to keep his extraordinary creative powers intact. It was these powers which enabled him survive the cruellest fortune in his family life. Rembrandt wanted to give his all. The concept of genius, which is closely linked to the concept of a creative force, suggests some kind of transcendant reality, placing the artist on a higher plane, above other people, where his work does not need to be understood. In this book, we have tried to avoid demonstrating Rembrandt's genius, but have sought instead to situate the artist in the context of his times, in order to illuminate his Ufe and his work and, finally, to reach a better understanding of his universality. GENIUS OR THE NOTION OF TIMELESSNESS Seventeenth-century artists in France and Italy depicted, more often than not, a world peopled by heroes or gods. The same tendency prevailed in the Low Countries and for a certain time manifested itself in Rembrandt's work. But lovers of art, of whom there were many more than in any other European country, were hungry for simpler images which corresponded more closely to daily life. Dutch artists were therefore freed from the obligation to create a world of the superhuman. In this sense, while remaining one of the most fascinating artists of the seventeenth century, Rembrandt was not a genius, strictly speaking. His work is not the expression of an artist seeking to confirm his identity as the creator of a new and different world. Primarily, he wished to reach the top rung of a social ladder upon which his contemporaries conferred a great deal of importance. Clearly, he needed to gain a certain security in order to achieve a sense of personal freedom. But little by little he was able to abandon this preoccupation. Looking at a Rembrandt painting, we feel no need to observe a respectful distance; rather, we move closer, the better to understand it; we are involved. Rembrandt had no desire to set up any ideal of beauty of the kind found in contemporary Italian and French painting. He used his prodigious talent to further a vision which was to grow both more profound and more austere as the years went by. His rehgious scenes soon began to distinguish themselves from the traditional formulae of his contemporaries, taking the form of a testament to a personal spiritual quest. Here we are presented with a startling paradox: that one of the greatest rehgious painters of all time lived in a country, the Netherlands, governed by a Protestant oligarchy. However, the paradox is merely superficial: while the rehgious image was prohibited in places of