Reserve Number: E15 Name: Spitz, Ellen Handler Course: HONR 300 Date Off: End of semester Rosenberg, Jakob and Slive, Seymour . Chapter 5: Rembrandt van Rijn . Dutch Art and Architecture: 1600- 1800 . Rosenberg, Jakob, Slive, S.and ter Kuile, E.H. p. 48-81 . Middlesex, England; Baltimore, MD . Penguin Books . 1966, 1972 . Call Number: . ISBN: . The copyright law of the United States (Title 17, United States Code) governs the making of photocopies or electronic reproductions of copyrighted materials. Under certain conditions specified in the law, libraries and archives are authorized to furnish a photocopy or electronic reproduction of copyrighted materials that is to be "used for...private study, scholarship, or research." You may download one copy of such material for your own personal, noncommercial use provided you do not alter or remove any copyright, author attribution, and/or other proprietary notice. Use of this material other than stated above may constitute copyright infringement. http://library.umbc.edu/reserves/staff/bibsheet.php?courseID=5869&reserveID=16584[8/18/2016 12:49:02 PM] REMBRANDT: THE LEIDEN PERIOD 1625-163 I CHAPTER 5 The Leiden Perfod: 1625-1631 REMBRANDT VAN RIJN Rembrandt's development can be divided into four basic periods: the beginnings in Leiden, and three phases in Amsterdam. In Leiden, a university town and important REMBRANDT HARMENSZ. VAN RIJN was born on rs July r6o6 in Leiden, the son of centre of humanism and scholarship, there was a distinct local atmosphere, while in the miller Harmen Gerritsz. van Rijn. His mother Cornelia (or Nelltgen) Willems­ cosmopolitan Amsterdam Rembrandt was more strongly exposed to the great inter­ dochter van Zuytbroek was the daughter of a baker. The parents lived on the Wcd­ national trends of Baroque art. It was in Amsterdam during the thirties that he first desteeg, close to the 'Rijn-mill', and the family name 'van Rijn' was derived from this reached a High Baroque phase, clearly under the impression of Rubens' art; and later - malt mill. On his mother's death in r640 - his father died in r630 - an inventory was in the fifties and sixties - a more classical style which, though far from outright classi­ taken of her estate which reflects fairly comfortable circumstances. In addition to half cism, showed some influence of the tectonic and monumental character of Renaissance of the mill, she owned some houses. The total value of her estate, not far from ro,ooo art. An intermediary period during the forties was a time of inner crisis and transition. guilders, was to be divided among the heirs. While Rembrandt was the eighth of nine This division of Rembrandt's career into four periods must, however, be applied with children, only four were alive at this time: Adriaen, a shoemaker, Willem, a baker, caution and judgement. Rembrandt's artistic development was not a rigid one. He was Rembrandt, and his sister Lysbeth. The facts of Rembrandt's origin are not unim­ capable of shifting moods and modes with great rapidity, and the style he used in one portant. The harsh force in the master's nature, most obvious in his early works, and his medium did not fully parallel one he used when he worked in another. Rembrandt's inexhaustible vitality may have something to do with his ancestry. They should also be genius was flexible and sometimes explosive. There are fluctuations, cross-currents, considered in connexion with the remarkable scope of his development. Rembrandt premonitions, and recurrences in his reuvre. progressed, with powerful impulses, with extraordinary elan, and with an intensity His first period was a time of rapid growth, rich enough to fill out the whole life of a hitherto unknown, from the rough to the sensitive, and from a somewhat brutal minor master, but in Rembrandt's career only a beginning which was followed by character in his art to the sublime. One wonders if a man who had been brought up more important stages. From the moment he embarked on independent activity he from the beginning in wealth and in more cultivated surroundings would ever have began to make religious pictures, and during the course of his career he worked more been driven by such dynamic forces to the height of his activity. from Scripture than from any other source. The amazing Feast of Esther (c. r625, 1 According to]. Orlers, Rembrandt's first biographer, the boy's parents destined their Raleigh, North Carolina Museum of Art; Plate 28B), bursting with energy, yet over­ gifted son for a learned profession, apparently with the ambition of opening his way to a rich in detail and somewhat immature in its lack of control over forms in space, can be higher social sphere. He attended the Leiden grammar school for seven years; and on 20 explained as an over-ambitious attempt by the youth to combine the lighting effects May r620 was enrolled as a student at the lmiversity of Leiden. It is not known how and the large scale of the Utrecht Caravaggesque painters with the style of his teacher long Rembrandt studied there. It is certain only that his parents soon recognized their Lastman.2 The synthesis was not a complete success. Young Rembrandt was more at son's natural inclination towards art as too strong to be denied, and that the boy was home with the new form of small realistic historical painting in the Early Baroque allowed to give up his university studies. He was then sent to an artist to learn the manner which Elsheimer's Dutch followers developed after their return from Italy. He rudiments of art. His first teacher has not been identified; his second was Jacob Isaacsz. did not attempt another lifesize composition again until I6JI, when he painted the van Swanenburgh (c. r571-r638), an obscure Leiden painter of architectural views and Holy Family (Plate 35A) now at Munich. Rembrandt's earliest extant dated work, the \ scenes of hell. Rembrandt spent three years with Van Swanenburgh, but not a trace of Stoning of St Stephen of r625 3 (Lyon, Museum; Plate 28A), shows how impressed he his style can be seen in the youthful artist's early work. It is also noteworthy that, as was by Lastman' s forcefulness based upon lively gestures and a vivid chiaroscuro. The far as we know, Rembrandt, who depicted almost every subject during the course of his young Leiden artist used the same kind of fanciful Italianate setting that his teacher career, never painted an architectmal scene or a view of hell. Orlers tells us that Rem­ employed, and depended on similar strong contrasts oflight and shade to give his work brandt's work with Van Swanenburgh showed such great promise that his father, in a dramatic character. In his colouring Rembrandt also follows the example ofLastman order to ensure his son's best advantage, sent him to Amsterdam to study for six in giving a hard brilliance to the illuminated figures. Rembrandt's immaturity is evident months with the famous Pieter Lastman. The eighteen- or nineteen-year-old youth here in the overcrowding and confused spatial relationships; however, the young artist returned to Leiden about r624-5 and set himself up as an independent master. The already surpasses his famous teacher by achieving a greater concentration in his com­ earliest works which can be attributed to him date from about this time. position. The horsemen and figures on the left have been massed into a group by a dark shadow which suppresses detail in almost half the painting. This device focuses attention 48 49 ;l ')t PART ONE: PAINTING r600-r675 REMBRANDT: THE LEIDEN PERIOD r625-r63 I on the main action and intensifies the mood. There is nothing comparable to it in the needle as he was with the painter's brush. Even his earliest prints have a radiance and re11vre ofLastman or any of the other 'pre-Rembrandtists'. intimacy of effect that exert a miraculous power. We not only read their stories; we One of the heads in the Lyon picture - the one looking at the scene in pained horror increasingly feel their graphic charm and their spiritual flavour. Here, too, Rembrandt just below the arm of the man holding a rock with both hands high above his head - discovered his way with lightning swiftness. After making a few experiments with the shows that Rembrandt was already making studies of his own physiognomy at this technique he was able to exploit the potential of the medium with absolute surety. By early date. It is a self-portrait, the earliest extant one by the artist, who represented the time he left Leiden for Amsterdam he was the outstanding etcher of his day. himself more frequently than any other master. Almost one hundred self-portraits by There is, however, one important category of Rembrandt's later activity which is Rembrandt are known. This unique autobiography presents Rembrandt's conception absent in his first period. Rembrandt did not execute portrait commissions until about of himself from the beginning to the end of his career: as a gay gallant, a proper bour­ 163 l, his last year in Leiden. In his youth he aspired to be a history painter, not a mere geois, a majestic Titan, and finally, as the aged sage who plumbed the secrets of his face-painter. The portraits he made in Leiden of members of his familys and old people innermost life. During his Leiden years Rembrandt also frequently used himself as a in fanciful guise were primarily studies of types for his subject pictures. The artist's convenient model to study chiaroscuro effects and facial expressions.