Rembrandt [antikvár]

The works of Rembrandt, the eminent Dutch painter of the seventeenth century, constitute an integral part of the spiritual heritage left to his fellow-countrymen and mankind at large. Two of the best collections of his works are to be found in the Soviet Union, one in the Hermitage in Leningrad, the other in the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts in Moscow. The thirty canvases now in the Soviet Union enable us to trace the intricate course of his development as a painter, to appreciate the remarkable range of his interests and experiments and to fathom the singularity of his art. Such canvases as his Danaé, Holy Family and The Return af the Prodigal Son have long been classed with the most brilliant achievements in the realm of painting. The two museums also contain many drawings and a remarkable collection of etchings. Rembrandt's heritage consists mostly of portraits and paintings on Biblical and mythological subjects (known in the seventeenth century as "histories"). While portraits outnumber his narrative canvases, Rembrandt personally regarded the latter as definitely the more important. The seventeenth century showed a preference both for tangible reality and wide generalization. Despite the flourishing of various genres, such as landscape and portraiture, depicting the surrounding scene, the men of the seventeenth century particularly valued the synthetic "history" genre, for it is precisely in "history" pictures that weighty moral and psychological problems were treated. Rembrandt began to work independently in 1625, after he had returned to his native Leiden upon completing, in Amsterdam, a six months' apprenticeship under Pieter Lastman. One of his most interesting and characteristic canvases of that early period is Christ Driving the Money-changers from the Temple (1626, Pushkin Museum). The speckled, rather light coloring is borrowed from Lastman, the figure of Christ wielding a whip goes back to Diirer's etchings. The traders and money-changers tumble over one another, filling the foreshortened space. Men clamor as they try to escape, dodge the whip, and save their money and ware. Anatomical faults are visible, and the perspective lacks conviction. Patently the work of a beginner, the picture smolders with a feverish glow characteristic of Rembrandt's distinctive manner. In the years to come, Rembrandt showed himself a master in the depiction of "passions" which played so great a role in the spiritual culture of the seventeenth century. His ideas of man's spiritual world and the aesthetic vistas revealed to him in painting ripened with surprising rapidity. Soon he began to produce works marked by a high professionalism, by an interest in man's intense spiritual life, and an understanding of the value of light and atmosphere in expressing emotion. In this manner, the artist evolved that fabric of problems and solutions in painting which we always associate with the name of Rembrandt. During the late 1620s Rembrandt painted numerous half-length self-portraits, as well as portraits of two or three of his acquaintances, proceeding from mere studies of facial expressions toward a more profound character study. A good example of this is the portrait known as The Old Warrior (ca. 1630, Hermitage). The sitter used to pose for Rembrandt during his Leiden years and was even thought some decades earlier to be his father, though evidence of that was lacking. The painter's interest was stirred by the model's nervous, vacillating mood, though in the canvas from the Hermitage collection this trait is toned down and the old man assumes a nobler appearance. A play of chiaroscuro and flowing brushwork outlining the contour enlivens his otherwise unattractive face. The painter is absorbed in a wide range of black textures: the black silk of the garments up against the cold surface of burnished steel, and the intense black of the velvet against the glint of light on the ostrich feathers. The man's apparel is not in keeping with the prevailing style of the time, for Rembrandt had selected articles of clothing according to their artistic appeal and their associative value in lifting the portrayed from the humdrum of life onto a higher plane. The metal breastplate turns the picture into a portrait of a "warrior," while the feathered beret suggests the so-called Burgundy dress (a free imitation of sixteenth century fashions, favored on the stage and in "history" paintings; Rembrandt always used this apparel in later years, both in his "histories" and non-commissioned portraits). From 1631 on Rembrandt began to produce portraits which were undoubtedly commissioned, one of the earliest of these being Portrait of a Scholar (1631, Hermitage). Whereas pictures of modest size painted on wood were characteristic of the preceding years, the Scholar is an imposing canvas whose composition is based on the combination of splashes of