Week 2 of Simon Scama's Power of art explored Rembrandt van Rijn (1606 - 1669)A man of humble birth who came to know the good life basically. Sounds like he and his rich wife could 'shop to you drop'. Amazing portraits and yet after the death of hsi wife his paitings begin to change from the very finished dutch style to a rougher 'incompleteness' is suggested, but et how powerful. He also seems to have been an artist who knew what the people wanted and could provide it in his art. The painting Schama focussed upon was one destoned for the City Chambers of Amsterdam
Schama says,
"Claudius Civilis is a painting drunk on its own wildness. It is a painting that would not just be the ruin of Rembrandt's comeback, but also the ruin of his greatest vision. Or so I think, for I can't be sure. None of us can, because we don't know what the big picture looked like. What we're looking at here is a fragment, a fifth of the original size, the bit rescued from Rembrandt's knife. This may just be the most heartbreaking fragment in the entire history of painting. The painting was commissioned as a stirring depiction of the legendary story of how the Dutch nation came to be born. What they got was Rembrandt's version of history: ugliness, deformity, barbarism; a bunch of cackling louts, onion chewers and bloody-minded rebels. The paint slashed and stabbed, caked on like the make up of warriors. Despite making him bankrupt he's saying: these are your flesh and blood, rough and honest, your barbarian ancestry. They made you Dutch."
A brave thing really - yet how powerful this art was and is.
The Return of the Prodigal is of course a favourite, made more so by Henri Nouwen's book on the painting.
"Often I have asked friends to give me their first impression of Rembrandt's Prodigal Son. Inevitably, they point to the wise old man who forgives his son: the benevolent patriarch.
"The longer I look at 'the patriarch', the clearer it becomes to me that Rembrandt has done something quite different from letting God pose as the wise old head of a family. It all began with the hands. The two are quite different. The father's left hand touching the son's shoulder is strong and muscular. The fingers are spread out and cover a large part of the prodigal son's shoulder and back. I can see a certain pressure, especially in the thumb. That hand seems not only to touch, but, with its strength, also to hold. Even though there is a gentleness in the way the father's left hand touches his son, it is not without a firm grip." (excerpt)
However, from the programme I was introduced briefly to his painting of Simeon. Here is the old man almost overwhelmed and his hands holding Jesus yet almost prayerful at the same time. A reverence.
