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Rembrandt and the rules of art
revisited
Eric Jan Sluijter, Universiteit van
Amsterdam and Institute of Fine
Arts, New York University
Since Jan Emmens’s influential book
Rembrandt en de regels van de
kunst, it has been generally
taken for granted that, because of
the fact that classicist art theory
took hold in Netherlandish art
literature after c. 1670, the
criticism of Rembrandt’s art -
which was seen as issuing from a
purely classicist standpoint - came
into being only after Rembrandt’s
death. Jan Emmens maintained, for
example, that the remarks Joachim
von Sandrart put into Rembrandt’s
mouth are plainly anti-classical, “
which was impossible in the
Netherlands in 1637-45, since
classicism did not yet exist.”
Emmens’s argument was so convincing
that scholars no longer asked
themselves whether these
discussions might possibly reflect
long-standing controversies.This is
all the more remarkable because an
alternative style in history
painting, which existed during the
whole of Rembrandt’s career, has
been given close attention lately
and, paradoxically, has been
labeled “Dutch classicism”. The
differences in style between these “
classicists” and Rembrandt and his
followers have been, however,
discussed only in twentieth-century
“Wölfflinian” terms of style,
without taking into account how
Rembrandt and his contemporaries
would have thought and talked about
stylistic distinctions. In this
paper I argue that the criticism
voiced by Von Sandrart in
particular, stemmed not so much
from theoretical ideas developed
only in the later 17th century as
from ongoing debates that had
already been raging during, and
even before, Rembrandt’s lifetime.
Such debates were rooted in
discussions that had arisen in
16-century Italy and were hotly
discussed in Rome as well as in
Amsterdam during the first decades
of the 17th century. The diverging
opinions were first outlined by
Vasari when he wrote about his
visit with Michelangelo to Titian’s
studio when the latter was working
on a Danaë, and which were
in extenso repeated by Van Mander.
By comparing Rembrandt’s etching of
a Woman on the Mound, its
Italian models and the conventions
in the depiction of nudes in the
Netherlands in the first decades of
the 17th century from which
Rembrandt consciously deviated, and
by examining paintings by Rembrandt
and Von Sandrart from the 1630s and
early 1640s in relation to Jacques
de Ville’s fierce reaction to the “
from life” ideology (in an obscure
but enlightening pamphlet of 1628),
as well as Von Sandrart’s
remarkably acute description of
Rembrandt’s manner of painting, the
terms are explored in which
Amsterdam artists in the period c.
1630-1650 thought about history
painting and how their views are
reflected in their works. It is
demonstrated that the ideas which
Emmens saw as the “plainly
anti-classical remarks that Von
Sandrart put into Rembrandt’s mouth”<
were burning issues in the 1630s
and ’40s in Amsterdam. Von Sandrart’<
s opinions about Rembrandt’s art
were not the result of later
classicist prejudices, but based on
his knowledge and experience from
the period in which he knew
Rembrandt in Amsterdam (1637-1645).
The presence in Amsterdam of a
highly ambitious and competitive
personality like Von Sandrart (who
came freshly from Rome and was well
informed of the latest developments
there), might have worked as a
catalyst and would have given the
ongoing discussions a more
consciously “classicist” tone.
Finally, Rembrandt’s Danaë
and Jacob van Loo’s reaction to it,
a Cimon and Ephigenia, are
considered – paintings of which the
rivaling “handeling” and the
contrasting connotations of the
subjects seem to have an almost
manifesto-like quality. It must
have been fascinating for the
Amsterdam connoisseurs to see and
discuss the completely different
means by which painters like
Rembrandt and his followers, on the
one hand, and Von Sandrart and Van
Loo, on the other, succeeded in not
only reaching their goals but also
visually commenting on those
artists whose goals were different
from their own.
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