Period Band B
The Self-Fashioning of Rembrandt
Tutor: Cordula Van Wyhe
Description
The enigmatic character of Rembrandt’s subject matter, his unique handling of oil paint, and his proclivity towards self-portraits -- a genre which he established almost single-handedly as a central mode for painters and as a major type of western painting -- have long elevated him into a paradigm for artistic individuality. As Simon Schama has recently put it in his book Rembrandt’s Eyes: “No artist had ever been so fascinated by the fashioning of personae, beginning with his own.” This very individuality of Rembrandt’s art, however, became a wide-spread fashion and a great number of Rembrandt’s pupils emulated his painterly style. His paintings therefore have long been problematic as far as the question of attribution is concerned. The modern trend has been restrictive: at the beginning of the twentieth century, Hofstede de Groot estimated his output at about 1000 paintings, while the Rembrandt Research Project (RRP), founded in Amsterdam in 1668, so far has only identified around 350 paintings, 300 etchings, and 2,000 drawings to be by Rembrandt’s hand.
This special subject will approach Rembrandt’s success as the result of his efforts to shape and control the formation of his artistic and social identity. This entails considering the cultural conditions which both provide and constrain an individual’s choices in creating a distinct, personal style. Firstly, it is an in-depth study of one of the most influential artist of the seventeenth-century: Rembrandt. The seminars will be chiefly focused on his lifetime, but also partly be concerned with his posthumous reputation. With its emphasis on Rembrandt’s own creation of his artistic identity, the course will provide students with a broad knowledge of the basic tenets of seventeenth-century society. Secondly, the course engages with methodological problems related to art-historical investigations of the individual artist as a creator and self-fashioner. The students are encouraged to explore the question of how the appearance of the paintings shaped the type of artistic identity conveyed and the extra-personal concerns projected. This allows students to analyse critically problems pertaining to artistic agency, intentionality, and style.