Rembrandt

Baroque master

Rembrandt's dramatic canvases and emblematic style make him one of the most beloved artists of all time. Many of his greatest works were created in his Baroque period, where crowded compositions and dramatic scenes dominated his paintings.

Revolutionary technique

Of all the Baroque masters, it was Rembrandt who evolved the most revolutionary technique and who seemed to grow into the Italians' spiritual heir. By the middle of the 1630s he had long since abandoned conventional Dutch smoothness and his surfaces were already caked with more paint than was strictly necessary to present an illusion. Rembrandt was weighing his sitters with jewelry solid enough to steal, vigorously modelled with a heavily loaded brush. Where others needed five touches he was using one, and so the brushstrokes had begun to separate and could sometimes only be properly read from a distance.

Baroque master's paintings

Portraits, biblical scenes, and historical subjects comprised many of this Baroque master's paintings. The exact imitation of form was being replaced by the suggestion of it. To some of his contemporaries his paintings began to look unfinished. It was from the Venetians that he had learned to use a brown ground so that his paintings emerged from dark to light, physically as well as spiritually.

Mythological and religious works

Rembrandt's mythological and religious works were much in demand, and he painted numerous dramatic masterpieces such as The Blinding of Samson (1636). Yet, despite a palette that was limited even by seventeenth century standards, he was renowned as a colorist for he managed to maintain a precarious balance between painting tonally, with light and shade, and painting in color. Just as form was suggested rather than delineated, so the impression of rich color was deceptive.

Variety of subjects

Unlike most Dutch artists, Rembrandt painted a wide variety of subjects - portraiture, mythology, religious scenes, history, and landscape - with unmatched virtuosity. His handling of glowing light against dark backgrounds, his deft brushwork in thick paint, and his truthful but sympathetic rendering of his subjects are among the virtues that place Rembrandt in the highest rank of painters. Rembrandt's shop was patronized by the middle-class citizenry of Amsterdam.

More information

Biblical Rembrandt
Peter Paul Rubens