Overview
- This concluding sixth volume of A Corpus of Rembrandt Paintings presents a revised, chronologically ordered survey of Rembrandt’s entire oeuvre of 336 paintings
- A considerable number of these paintings are reattributed to Rembrandt by the author after they were rejected by connoisseurs in the 1960s and subsequently
- The book includes extensive commentaries on the re-attributed works and many of Rembrandt’s other paintings
- Provides a multi-facetted new insight into Rembrandt’s world and in the fields of Rembrandt connoisseurship and research
- Contains 430 color plates (including 77 enlarged details) and c. 750 additional illustrations, and figures mostly in color
- This work of art history and art research belongs in the library of every serious art historical institute, university or museum
Part of the book series: Rembrandt Research Project Foundation (RRSE, volume 6)
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About this book
A revised survey of Rembrandt’s complete painted oeuvre.
The question of which 17th-century paintings in Rembrandt’s style were actually painted by Rembrandt himself had already become an issue during his lifetime. It is an issue that is still hotly disputed among art historians today.
The problem arose because Rembrandt had numerous pupils who learned the art of painting by imitating their master or by assisting him with his work as a portrait painter. He also left pieces unfinished, to be completed by others.
The question is how to determine which works were from Rembrandt’s own hand. Can we, for example, define the criteria of quality that would allow us to distinguish the master’s work from that of his followers? Do we yet have methods of investigation that would deliver objective evidence of authenticity? To what extent do research techniques used in the physical sciences help? Or are we, after all, still dependent on the subjective, expert eye of the connoisseur? The book provides answers to these questions.
Prof. Ernst van de Wetering, the author of our forthcoming book which deals with these questions, has been closely involved in all aspects of this research since 1968, the year the renowned Rembrandt Research Project (RRP) was founded. In particular, he played an important role in developing new criteria for authentication. Van de Wetering was also witness to the way the often overly zealous tendency to doubt the authenticity of Rembrandt’s paintings got out of hand. In this book he re-attributes to the master a substantial number of unjustly rejected Rembrandts. He also was closely involved in the (re)discovery of a considerable number of lost or completely unknown works by Rembrandt.
The verdicts of earlier specialists – including the majority of members of the original RRP (up to 1989) – were based on connoisseurship: the self-confidence in one’s ability to recognise a specific artist’s style and ‘hand’. Over the years, Van de Wetering has carried out seminal research into 17th-century studio practice and ideas about art current in Rembrandt’s time. In this book he demonstrates the fallibility of traditional connoisseurship, especially in the case of Rembrandt, who was par excellence a searching artist.
The methodological implications of this critical view are discussed in an introductory chapter which relates the history of the developments in this turbulent field of research. Van de Wetering’s account of his own involvement in it makes this book a lively and sometimes unexpectedly personal account.
The catalogue section presents a chronologically ordered survey of Rembrandt’s entire painted oeuvre of 336 paintings, richly illustrated and annotated. For all the paintings re-attributed in this book, extensive commentaries have been included that provide a multi-facetted new insight into Rembrandt’s world and the world of art-historical research.
Rembrandt’s Paintings Revisited is the concluding sixth volume of A Corpus of Rembrandt Paintings (Volumes I-V; 1982, 1986, 1989, 2005, 2010). It can also be read as a revisionary critique of the first three Volumes published by the old RRP team up till 1989 and of Gerson’s influential survey of Rembrandt’s painted oeuvre of 1968/69. At the same time, the book is designed as an independent overview that can be used on the basis that anyone seeking more detailed information will be referred to the five previous (digital versions of the) Volumes and the detailed catalogues published in the meantime by the various museums with collections of Rembrandt paintings.
This work of art history and art research should belong in the library of every serious art historical institute, university or museum.
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Keywords
- 17th-century paintings
- Ability to recognize an artist's hand
- Ability to recognize an artist's style
- Art research
- Connoisseurship
- Criteria for authentification
- Evidence of authenticity
- Fallibility of connoisseurship
- Foundation Rembrandt Research Project
- RRP
- Rejected Rembrandts
- Rembrandt
- Rembrandt Research Project
- Rembrandt's followers
- Rembrandt's hand
- Rembrandt's painted oeuvre
- Rembrandt's style
- Traditional connoisseurship
Table of contents (10 chapters)
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Front Matter
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What is a Rembrandt? A personal account
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Catalogue
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Front Matter
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Plates and biographical remarks
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Front Matter
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Notes to the plates
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Front Matter
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Back Matter
About the author
Ernst van de Wetering is professor emeritus of art history at the University of Amsterdam. He has been involved with the Rembrandt Research Project since the beginning and has been chairman of the project since 1993. Internationally renowned as the authority on Rembrandt and his paintings, Van de Wetering has published extensively on the topic of historic painting techniques, as well as on the field of theory and ethics of conservation and restoration.
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: A Corpus of Rembrandt Paintings VI
Book Subtitle: Rembrandt’s Paintings Revisited - A Complete Survey
Authors: Ernst Wetering
Series Title: Rembrandt Research Project Foundation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-9240-0
Publisher: Springer Dordrecht
eBook Packages: Humanities, Social Sciences and Law, Literature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)
Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature B.V. 2014
eBook ISBN: 978-94-017-9240-0Published: 11 November 2014
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: XII, 736
Number of Illustrations: 197 b/w illustrations, 1135 illustrations in colour
Topics: Arts, History, general, Fine Arts