Rembrandt

de Holm Bevers, Peter Schatborn, Barbara Welzel

Rembrandt is an artist who has excited exceptional interest since his own lifetime: the remarkable combination of his work, his complex personal relationships, his financial difficulties and the relative lack of documentary evidence has generated a vast body of scholarship. As a result, by the middle of this century, innumerable paintings and drawings were attributed to Rembrandt and a romantic mythology had replaced the facts of his life. The Rembrandt Research Project, comprising the foremost Rembrandt scholars, based in Amsterdam, has undertaken the formidable task of establishing a body of works which can be securely attributed to Rembrandt. This has resulted in the deattribution of many paintings, once unquestioningly accepted as Rembrandts. Others have focused on artists known to have studied in Rembrandt's workshop and the attribution of paintings to these students. This magnificent book unites these two strands of research to present for the first time a clear picture of Rembrandt's relationship with the members of his workshop. The book also serves as a catalogue of the exhibition organised by curators from Berlin, Amsterdam and London--galleries which have three of the finest collections of Rembrandts. It includes essays on Rembrandt's biography and social status, his technique, the organisation of his workshop, and the history of critical response to him. The catalogue contains detailed study of fifty-one paintings by Rembrandt, providing a chronological overview of his entire output from his earliest subjects to the last self-portrait. This is followed by sections for pupils, including Ferdinand Bol, Gerrit Dou and Nicolaes Maes, in which paintings once given to Rembrandt are reattributed to members of his workshop and related to paintings known to be by them. Thus readers may judge these new ideas for themselves on the basis of the evidence provided. -- Inside jacket flap.