Dat kan beter!

de Jaap van der Veen

The exhibition 'Room for Improvement! Rembrandt and the Old Masters' opened on 9 November 2013 in the museum's new wing. More than a hundred and twenty prints illustrate the way Rembrandt was inspired to emulate and improve upon the prints of illustrious predecessors and contemporaries in his own etchings. Hanging alongside Rembrandt's etchings will be prints by 'old' masters like Albrecht Dürer, Lucas van Leyden, Annibale Carracci, Hendrick Goltzius, Peter Paul Rubens, Jacques Callot and Jan Lievens. From the inventory of his property, drawn up when Rembrandt went bankrupt in 1656, it is known that Rembrandt owned some 4,000 prints at the time. Among them were works by sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Italian, German, Flemish, French and Dutch artists. Rembrandt had the models he admired immediately at hand and was able to borrow motifs and compositions from them. He made a conscious effort to surpass his examples, clearly believing that there was plenty of room for improvement. Exhibition: Rembrandthuis, Amsterdam, the Netherlands (09.11.2013-19.01.2014).