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Innovatively and provocatively, Rembrandt turned the art world upside down in the Golden Age. His poignant works and his life story continue to inspire and move the world 350 years after his death. The largest and most spectacular collection of his paintings, prints and drawings in the world is curated by the Rijksmuseum. In 2019, the museum honours Rembrandt with the exhibition 'Alle Rembrandts'. Never before has the Rijksmuseum presented an exhibition of all of Rembrandt's works from the collection: a one-off exhibition of no less than 400 Rembrandts. Together they paint an unparalleled picture of Rembrandt as a human being, as an artist, as a storyteller and innovator. Jonathan Bikker, research curator at the Rijksmuseum, describes the highs and lows of Rembrandt's life in an accessible way, opening up the genius of Rembrandt's character and the innovative qualities of his work to the general public.
A remarkably versatile man, Jan van der Heyden (1637-1712) was the preeminent painter of cityscapes in the Netherlands and the first artist to capture all the beauty of the urban scene. Notwithstanding his achievements as an artist, Van der Heyden was even more famous in his own time as an inventor and engineer: he invented firefighting equipment that set the standard throughout Europe for two centuries, and he perfected the streetlamp. This is the first book in English devoted to Van der Heyden. It includes recent discoveries about his fascinating life and offers an introduction to his ravishing art. The book includes a general discussion of Van der Heyden’s work, entries on 40 of his paintings, illustrations of about 100 of his paintings, as well as supplemental drawings and prints. Focusing mainly on the bustling city of Amsterdam, he also recorded other Dutch, Flemish, and German cities with a brilliant palette and exceptionally detailed technique. Often innovative in his composition, he was the first artist to create imaginary scenes by rearranging existing city views and known buildings.
"The book draws on extensive research to revise what has been known about Drost's life, his stylistically diverse oeuvre, and his influences. The artist's training and his relationship to Rembrandt and other artists in the Rembrandt circle are examined, as is his Venetian period and the relation of his style to that of German-born painter Johann Carl Loth. Drost emerges as one of Rembrandt's most talented imitators and, despite his very short career, an artist with a variety of faces."--BOOK JACKET.
Bringing together themes in the history of art, punishment, religion, and the history of medicine, Picturing Punishment provides new insights into the wider importance of the criminal to civic life.
Contrary to what Kant believed about the Dutch (and their visual culture) as “being of an orderly and diligent position” and thus having no feeling for the sublime, this book argues that the sublime played an important role in seventeenth-century Dutch visual culture. By looking at different visualizations of exceptional heights, divine presence, political grandeur, extreme violence, and extraordinary artifacts, the authors demonstrate how viewers were confronted with the sublime, which evoked in them a combination of contrasting feelings of awe and fear, attraction and repulsion. In studying seventeenth-century Dutch visual culture through the lens of notions of the sublime, we can move beyond the traditional and still widespread views on Dutch art as the ultimate representation of everyday life and the expression of a prosperous society in terms of calmness, neatness, and order. The book will be of interest to scholars working in art history, visual culture, architectural history, and cultural history.
Early this year the two Rembrandt portraits were bought together by the Netherlands and France, a unique event. From 2 July to 2 October 2016 Marten & Oopjen will have a place of honour alongside The Night Watch. The paintings will then be restored at the Rijksmuseum. Rembrandt painted the marriage portraits of the newly-weds Marten Soolmans and Oopjen Coppit in Amsterdam in 1634, when he was twenty-eight. The portraits, more than two metres high, remained in private hands for almost four centuries. Who exactly were Marten and Oopjen? Jonathan Bikker, Rijksmuseum curator, carried out extensive research into the two portraits by Rembrandt.
Frans Hals is one of the most important portrait painters of all time. Like Rembrandt, the famous Dutch Baroque master's striking portraits of the bourgeoisie and social outsiders are distinguished by their extraordinary vividness and accurate depiction. His sketch-like paintings, executed with bold brushstrokes, had a decisive influence on modernist painting. This comprehensive publication coincides with the first major survey exhibition of Hals' oeuvre in more than thirty years. FRANS HALS (1582/84–1666) was born in Antwerp, the son of a cloth merchant. In 1610 he was accepted into the Haarlem Guild of St. Luke. Hals created hundreds of genre paintings, individual, and group portraits and enjoyed great public prestige. Despite his fame during his lifetime, it was not until the nineteenth century that he was enthusiastically rediscovered by the Impressionists and Realists.
This lavish catalogue presents 150 European paintings, pastels, and drawings from the late fifteenth to the mid-nineteenth century that have been given to the Metropolitan Museum by Mr. and Mrs. Charles Wrightsman or are still held in Mrs. Wrightsman's private collection. These notable works were collected over the past four decades, many of them with the Museum in mind; some were purchased by the Museum through the Wrightsman Fund. Highlights of the book include masterpieces by Vermeer, El Greco, Rubens, Van Dyck, Georges de La Tour, Jacques-Louis David, and Caspar David Friedrich as well as numerous paintings by the eighteenth-century Venetian artists Canaletto, Guardi, and the Tiepolos, father and son, plus a dozen remarkable portrait drawings by Ingres. Each work is reproduced in color and is accompanied by a short essay.
Rembrandt: Studies in his Varied Approaches to Italian Art explores his engagement with imagery by Italian masters. His references fall into three categories: pragmatic adaptations, critical commentary, and conceptual rivalry. These are not mutually exclusive but provide a strategy for discussion. This study also discusses Dutch artists’ attitudes toward traveling south, surveys contemporary literature praising and/or criticizing Rembrandt, and examines his art collection and how he used it. It includes an examination of the vocabulary used by Italians to describe Rembrandt’s art, with a focus on the patron Don Antonio Ruffo, and closes by considering the reception of his works by Italian artists.
Named a Top 100 Must-Read Book of the Year by Time and a Best Book of the Year by The New Yorker * Winner of the 2024 Writers' Prize for Nonfiction * Shortlisted for the Inaugural Women’s Prize for Nonfiction * Longlisted for the RSL Ondaatje Prize New York Times bestselling author Laura Cumming “combines first-rate art history with deeply felt memoir” (The Washington Post) in this fascinating, little-known story of the massive explosion in Holland that killed Carel Fabritius, renowned painter of The Goldfinch and A View of Delft and nearly killed Johannes Vermeer—two of the greatest artists of the 17th century. “Exquisite.” —Simon Schama, The Guardian As a brilliant art critic...