A prolific painter, draftsman, and etcher, Rembrandt van Rijn is usually regarded as the greatest artist of Holland’s “Golden Age.”He worked first in his native Leiden and, from onward, in Amsterdam, where he had studied briefly (ca. ) with the Rembrandt essay- comparison Compare a selection of Self-Portraits by Rembrandt with those of an earlier artist, such as Durer or Titian. Many artists were influenced by the styles and techniques of Titian, one of these being Rembrandt. /5(4) Mar 22, · We Will Write a Custom Essay about Rembrandt Essay. For You For Only $/page! order now. Rembrandt created the dramatic and emotional effect in all of his paintings through “chiaroscuro”, the use of contrast between light and darkness. He also makes use of light to impart depth on his paintings and blogger.comted Reading Time: 3 mins
Rembrandt Essay - Free Argumentative Essays For Students
Spotlight Essay: Rembrandt van RijnThe Three Crossesrembrandt essay, —61 October ; updated Louis and assistant curator at the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum. A torrential downpour of lines envelops dozens of figures on the hill of Golgotha, where Christ is pictured crucified between the two thieves. Even though it is an inherently tragic subject commonly portrayed in Christian tradition, never before had it been staged with such sweeping emotional force. When Jesus died, the passage continues, the earth shook, rocks split, tombs opened, rembrandt essay, and the bodies of many sleeping saints arose.
To achieve these supernatural effects, Rembrandt employed the kind of bold technical ingenuity that helped define him as one of the most significant printmakers of his age. Rembrandt turned to the Bible as a source for his etchings throughout his career, rembrandt essay, and the s were a particularly innovative period for him. He depicted scenes from both the Old and New Testaments, particularly those centered on the life of Christ, transforming the written word into a compelling pictorial language. The Three Crosses was made entirely in drypoint, a technique in which furrows rembrandt essay scratched directly into a copper plate with a stylus.
These gouges create rough edges, called burr, which retain an abundant amount of ink when the plate is inked and gently wiped, rembrandt essay, resulting in velvety lines when printed. Drypoint lines are more fragile, however, not holding up long under the force of the printing press, and for that reason drypoint-only prints were rarely attempted in the early modern period. They were economically unfeasible, and never before had one been rembrandt essay of this size. Making especially deep gashes into the copper plate, Rembrandt covered the land in a cascading shadow, smothering the scene in a tumultuous atmosphere that heightens the raw desperation of the sacrificial figure of Christ on the central cross and his followers spread across the hill of Golgotha.
The decision by Rembrandt to make this print in was not a straightforward one, rembrandt essay. He had encountered a number of financial difficulties, construction on his house had severely restricted his painting activity, and it seems that he was forced to sell the majority of his earlier etching plates to a dealer that year. Drypoint had the advantage of directness and attractive, rich lines, but the artist must have known that the edges would wear down and the quality of the impressions would quickly degrade. Rembrandt essay reason he may have felt emboldened was his own success over the preceding few years, rembrandt essay. He gave away the print on a number of occasions, rembrandt essay we know from inscriptions on the back of several early impressions, rembrandt essay, and he printed very few impressions rembrandt essay. Knowing that his most curious rembrandt essay bold works were in such rembrandt essay, Rembrandt embarked on the ambitious The Three Crosses.
With respect to The Three CrossesHinterding concluded that Rembrandt was able to print about sixty impressions from the plate in the rembrandt essay three states before it started to noticeably wear down. Rembrandt, however, discovered an alternative. He had already begun, over the course of several decades, to make an unusual number of alterations to his etching plates, rembrandt essay, strengthening a line here or there and occasionally scraping away a small portion to alter or add an element. Rembrandt essay impression in the collection of the Kemper Art Museum represents the radical fourth state of The Three Crosses.
When the quality of the drypoint lines began to degrade, rembrandt essay, Rembrandt made an extreme departure, strengthening and redrawing the outlines of many figures, including Christ, and scraping away others entirely and placing them in different positions with changed poses. Along with other changes, there were originally two figures directly below Christ, leading away from the scene and toward a cave-like area to the lower right. These figures were presumably Nicodemus and Joseph of Aramathea, moving toward the tomb from which Christ would be resurrected. In the fourth state Rembrandt scraped one of them away entirely, but the vestiges of the figure can still be seen.
Another dramatically altered figure was the centurion, who was originally prostrate on the ground next to Christ. Similarly, the figures clustered around the swooning Virgin Mary were completely remodeled. The most dramatic alteration to the print, however, is the effect caused by the rembrandt essay lines that Rembrandt bore into the copper, which cast the right third of the print into immense darkness. To make these lines, rembrandt essay, Rembrandt not only had to slash hard into the metal, but he was also cutting across the grain of lines already present in the earlier image.
Never before had a print been so fundamentally reworked. So different were the scenes before and after the change that connoisseurs were not sure rembrandt essay came from the same plate until the following century. By surrounding the scene with darkness and opening an alley of light up the center of the hill, Rembrandt directed more focus to the figure of Christ himself than to the array of other narrative elements. The plate was signed and dated in the third state, rembrandt essay, but for years scholars had assumed that the fourth state was made later, around —61, after Rembrandt had time to thoroughly rethink, and reenvision, his subject. Watermarks were introduced in the papermaking process in Europe to distinguish one producer from another, and each batch of paper had a unique design, a sort of coat of arms, embedded into each large sheet.
Not every print will reveal a watermark, however: sometimes they are obscure, and other times they may not have one at all, as smaller prints may have been made with only a section of the available sheet. This can be complicated, though, because he printed in batches as needed, using whatever papers he had at hand that he felt were appropriate, rembrandt essay. watermark, which is the same watermark found on all impressions of The Three Crosses on which watermarks are visible, both before and after the major change to the fourth state of the plate. When Rembrandt made another print of nearly identical size, Ecce Homoinhe did not use the same paper again, suggesting that he had run out of that paper by then. This also provides further evidence that the changes to the fourth state of would have had to come prior to the printing of Ecce Homo.
Rembrandt had begun this practice of varied wiping many years earlier, but his encounter in the late s with papers that arrived from the Far East drastically increased his experimentation. Overall, one gains the sense of Christ as a man, in his final moment, as the land is over-whelmed by the natural forces emanating from God. While such a view of Christ could be widely appreciated, it presented a particularly poignant Protestant perspective, contrasting as it did with depictions of a heroic, rembrandt essay, muscle-bound, writhing Christ found so frequently in Catholic imagery of the seventeenth century, particularly coming from Italy and from the studio of Peter Paul Rubens in Antwerp.
By choosing drypoint, by dramatically changing the plate, by printing with varied inkings, and by contrasting the humanity of Christ with a cosmic onslaught, Rembrandt reenvisioned a common subject in Christian art, imbuing it with a new sensibility of subjective emotional response. On the conclusion that Rembrandt essay sold his plates insee Erik Hinterding, Rembrandt as an Etchervol. Louis Collections St. Louis: Saint Louis Art Museum, Arnold Houbraken, for example, suggested that collectors had to have both versions of the woman by the stove, the one with the key in the oven door and the one without Houbraken, De groote Schouburgh der Nederlantsche konstschilders en schilderessenvol.
It was once possibly in the collection of the Hon. John Spencer — or his son George John, the second Earl Spencer — It passed via auction from their family rembrandt essay the dealer P. Colnaghi of London, who sold it to the prominent Dutch collector Hendrikus Egbertus ten Cate —who owned several hundred paintings in addition to prints and drawings. It was acquired by Malvern B. Clopton — in New York from the dealer M. Knoedler and Company and was given to Washington University in Clopton, a surgeon and teacher at the Washington University School of Medicine who had served in World War I, donated more than a hundred prints and drawings, which remain rembrandt essay the Kemper Art Museum collection, including six prints by Rembrandt, rembrandt essay.
Ackley et al. These so-called Japanese papers the Dutch also imported types from China and India did not soak up ink in the same way as the thicker European papers, but instead tended to allow the ink to sit more readily on the surface. Rembrandt van Rijn, rembrandt essay, The Three Crosses— Gift of Dr. Malvern B. Clopton, WU Skip to Navigation. Sam Fox School Kemper Art Museum Island Press. Search Search this site, rembrandt essay. Kemper primary links Exhibitions Current and online exhibitions Upcoming exhibitions Past exhibitions Programs Lectures and talks Public tours Workshops Member programs University programs Special events Collection About the collection Explore the rembrandt essay Art on Campus program Spotlight essay series Virtual tours.
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Rembrandt for Children: Art History Biography for Kids - FreeSchool
, time: 3:57Essay - Rembrandt and The Leiden Collection
Rembrandt’s artistic origins in Leiden and early successes in Amsterdam, seen through the lens of The Leiden Collection. The range of impressive paintings from the s and s in The Leiden Collection shows how Rembrandt van Rijn (–69) became so tremendously successful in his day, and why he ranks among the greatest, most admired artists of all time Rembrandt created some etchings and drypoints from about to His career as a printmaker ran parallel to his career as a painter—he rarely treated the same themes in both media and only occasionally did he reproduce his paintings in prints. Above all, he was a great innovator and experimenter in this medium, often handling traditional materials in Rembrandt and the Nude Essay Words | 7 Pages. Rembrandt van Rijn was a Dutch artist well known for his many paintings and etchings of landscapes, figures and animals. His subjects included biblical, secular and mythological scenes. Rembrandt also dabbled in the nude even though they were not popular among his contemporaries
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