Belshazzar's story as the King of Babylon was described in the Old Testament. He committed sacrilege by having gold and silver vessels that his father, Nebuchadnezzar, had looted from the Temple in Jerusalem stolen back for his own use.
When he ordered the vessels to be filled with wine for his many guests and nobles at a great banquet, a disembodied hand emerged from a small cloud to inscribe mysterious symbols on the wall. The prophet Daniel explained that the hand of God wrote the message to signify King Belshazzar's downfall.
The interpretation of the symbols was: "God has numbered the days of your kingdom and brought it to an end; you have been weighed in the balances and found wanting; your kingdom is given to the Medes and Persians". This is the moment Belshazzar abruptly rises and twists his head around to see the glowing message on the back wall; he knocks over precious items and startles the people around him.
He ended up being killed that very evening. Rembrandt painted this canvas to establish himself as a master of large-scale Baroque history paintings, as Rubens did in the European courts. He painted the concentrated shock of physical force, as the scene is a study of action, fear, and surprise; each figure is shown in a dramatic, recoiling posture within a composition of illusionistic effects and compositional arrangements to involve the viewer.
Belshazzar's solid triangular form and stance determines the compositional arrangement: three areas are established with shocked guests to the left, a bending, lushly attired servant to the right, and the ghostly image on the wall above.
Rembrandt's mastery of chiaroscuro makes the forms seem to gently emerge or disappear back into the darker areas. As a young art dealer in the 19 th century, Vincent Van Gogh visited museums and galleries to study the master works.
Rembrandt especially influenced his subject matter and drawing style. He called Rembrandt the " This richly appointed scene depicts the story of Danae, a character from Greek mythology. In the tale, her father King Akrisios secludes the young woman after he receives a prophecy that his daughter will have a son who will eventually kill him.
But Zeus manages to appear to Danae as a ray of golden light, slipping by the eyes of her maidservant. Through the union of Danae and Zeus, Perseus is born, and he indeed goes on to kill his grandfather.
Mythological stories are often complex but in this painting, Danae has been described as welcoming. In the foreground, an elaborate sparkling gold bed support, a thick rug with Danae's bejeweled slippers, and a velvety draped form bring the viewer into the composition.
A majestic celestial shower of golden light pours in from the left to warmly illuminate Danae's face and body. The effect creates softness and sensuality in all the bedding, draperies, and shining metalwork that surround the alluring woman. The female figure, adorned only with floral bracelets and other jewelry, is the subject but the golden light truly occupies this space and is the heart of the story.
Hovering above Danae in the life-size painting is a golden Cherub with bound hands, symbol of chastity. Rembrandt did not paint many mythological scenes but this one is possibly his most masterful due to the tender beauty of the young nude, perhaps influenced by Titian, and the genius handling of the light.
I feel the desire to paint; but when I see a Rembrandt, I want to give it up The group portrait, often called a "corporation portrait" was uniquely Dutch and was oftentimes as enormous as a modern billboard. Rembrandt painted this large canvas between and on commission for the musketeer branch of a civic militia, a wealthy segment of Amsterdam society. Any of the members could be assigned to guard gates, police the streets, put out fires and maintain order.
Their presence was also required at parades for visiting royalty and other festive occasions. Rather than using the accepted standard convention of a stately and formal pose, such as lining up in rows or sitting at a banquet, he presented a bustling, and semi-confused scene of members in preparation for an event. The painting is also known as The Shooting Company of Frans Banning Cocq and Willem van Ruytenburch , which are the names of the men who are brightly illuminated and stepping forward in the center foreground.
There was no set standard for dress in the militia, so the outfits could be quite elaborate. Captain Cocq, a law school-educated and prosperous by marriage citizen, is elegantly dressed in black with a large lacy collar and deep red sash trimmed with gold around his chest.
Captain van Ruytenburch, from a family of grocers, has a more dazzling costume: a stunning golden coat made of yellow leather ornamented with fancy French bows and rich patterns, complimented by gloves and Cavalier riding boots with spurs.
It is believed that this painting was hung low and the two central, almost life-sized figures would have seemed to step out of the composition while the other participants assembled to follow. As with other group paintings, Rembrandt incorporated details that defined the identity and purpose of its members.
For example, to the viewer's left behind the men is a small female figure, also highly illuminated. She is identified as a mascot, carrying the main symbols of the group: the claws of a dead chicken which represent a defeated enemy, a pistol representing the klover, their main weapon, and one golden drinking horn. In the rear a group of men, armed with an array of weapons, wearing various bits of armor and helmets assemble before a massive, but imaginary archway that represented the city gate to be defended.
On the left, the standard bearer, dressed in blue, raises the troop banner while on the far right the men hold their pikes high. A drummer hired for the occasion, shown in partial view on our right, taps out a cadence while a dog barks enthusiastically at his feet.
Various other participants, included to heighten the activity and drama, are in the background with their faces obscured or partly visible. However, one figure wearing a beret and peering up from behind a helmeted figure near the standard bearer has been identified as Rembrandt himself. Rembrandt was at the height of his career when he painted this ambitious painting, which was a success at the time and is still regarded as one of his most celebrated works. Critic Clement Greenberg once defined the pre-Modernist painting as the struggle against confinement to two dimensions.
The Night Watch certainly seems to burst forth from the canvas, a virtuoso of Baroque vigor, dramatic intensity, and powerful lighting.
This life size canvas presents the biblical character Bathsheba in an ambiguous shallow space, illuminated from the left posed in front of a darker, obscure background. The story from the Old Testament describes how King David noticed a woman bathing out-of-doors when he was on the terrace of his palace. He learned that she was the wife of one of his generals. Bathsheba is shown holding a letter in her right hand while her servant dries her feet; King David had summoned her to appear before him.
Her somewhat melancholy yet still musing expression reveals that Bathsheba is pleasantly interested but sadly concerned for if she goes to King David, she will betray her husband. In order to conceal his adultery and marry Bathsheba, King David sent Eliam into battle and ordered his other generals to abandon him, leaving him to certain death. God later punished King David dearly for this sin. Born in Leiden, Netherlands, in , Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn attended elementary school from to , and then attended the Latin School in Leiden, where he partook in biblical studies and lessons on the classics.
It is unclear whether Rembrandt completed his studies at the Latin School, but one account claims that he was removed from school early and sent to be trained as a painter at his own request. From to either or , Rembrandt trained as an artist under two masters. His first was painter Jacob van Swanenburgh — , with whom he studied for about three years.
Under van Swanenburgh, Rembrandt would have learned basic artistic skills. In , Rembrandt settled back in Leiden, now a master in his own right, and over the next six years, he laid the foundations for his life's work. It was during this time that Lastman's influence was most noticeable, as in several instances Rembrandt deconstructed his former master's compositions and reassembled them into his own, a practice carried on by Rembrandt's own pupils later on.
Rembrandt also worked on his first etchings in Leiden, and his eventual international fame would rely on the widespread dissemination of these works. Diverging from his contemporaries, Rembrandt endowed his etchings with a painterly quality achieved through suggestive handling of light and dark. Rembrandt's style soon took an innovative turn involving his use of light. At the same time, there was a marked decrease in painted works in favor of etchings and drawings of landscapes.
In these graphic works natural drama eventually made way for quiet Dutch rural scenes. In the s, Rembrandt's style changed again. Paintings increased in size, colours became richer and brush strokes more pronounced. With these changes, Rembrandt distanced himself from earlier work and current fashion, which increasingly inclined toward fine, detailed works. His singular approach to paint application may have been suggested in part by familiarity with the work of Titian, and could be seen in the context of the then current discussion of 'finish' and surface quality of paintings.
Contemporary accounts sometimes remark disapprovingly of the coarseness of Rembrandt's brushwork, and the artist himself was said to have dissuaded visitors from looking too closely at his paintings. The tactile manipulation of paint may hearken to medieval procedures, when mimetic effects of rendering informed a painting's surface. The end result is a richly varied handling of paint, deeply layered and often apparently haphazard, which suggests form and space in both an illusionistic and highly individual manner.
In later years, biblical themes were still depicted often, but emphasis shifted from dramatic group scenes to intimate portrait-like figures James the Apostle, In his last years, Rembrandt painted his most deeply reflective self-portraits from to he painted fifteen , and several moving images of both men and women The Jewish Bride , ca. Rembrandt produced etchings for most of his career, from to , when he was forced to sell his printing-press and virtually abandoned etching.
Only the troubled year of produced no dated work. He took easily to etching and, though he also learned to use a burin and partly engraved many plates, the freedom of etching technique was fundamental to his work. He was very closely involved in the whole process of printmaking, and must have printed at least early examples of his etchings himself. At first he used a style based on drawing, but soon moved to one based on painting, using a mass of lines and numerous bitings with the acid to achieve different strengths of line.
Towards the end of the s, he reacted against this manner and moved to a simpler style, with fewer bitings.
He worked on the so-called Hundred Guilder Print in stages throughout the s, and it was the "critical work in the middle of his career", from which his final etching style began to emerge. Although the print only survives in two states, the first very rare, evidence of much reworking can be seen underneath the final print and many drawings survive for elements of it.
In the mature works of the s, Rembrandt was more ready to improvise on the plate and large prints typically survive in several states, up to eleven, often radically changed. He now uses hatching to create his dark areas, which often take up much of the plate. He also experimented with the effects of printing on different kinds of paper, including Japanese paper, which he used frequently, and on vellum.
He began to use "surface tone," leaving a thin film of ink on parts of the plate instead of wiping it completely clean to print each impression. He made more use of drypoint, exploiting, especially in landscapes, the rich fuzzy burr that this technique gives to the first few impressions. His prints have similar subjects to his paintings, although the twenty-seven self-portraits are relatively more common, and portraits of other people less so.
There are forty-six landscapes, mostly small, which largely set the course for the graphic treatment of landscape until the end of the 19th century. One third of his etchings are of religious subjects, many treated with a homely simplicity, whilst others are his most monumental prints. A few erotic, or just obscene, compositions have no equivalent in his paintings. He owned, until forced to sell it, a magnificent collection of prints by other artists, and many borrowings and influences in his work can be traced to artists as diverse as Mantegna, Raphael, Hercules Segers, and Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione.
Dutch Title: Christus in de storm op het meer van Galilea. The M iracles of Jesus are the supernatural deeds attributed to him in the Gospels. In one such deed, Jesus saves his disciples by calming a storm while they are crossing the Sea of Galilee in a boat. It was created during the First Amsterdam Period — of Rembrandt when he was in his late twenties. He created a number of Biblical scenes during this period and this painting is one of them. Considered the biggest art theft in US history, it remains unsolved.
Dutch Title: Zelfportret met Baret en opstaande kraag. It shows him seated in a broadly painted fur cloak with his hands clasped in his lap. The most luminous area showcases his face. The artist is wearing a large beret or cap, and his collar is turned up; hence the name. Rembrandt is regarded as one of the greatest artists in the genre of self-portraiture and this painting is his most famous self-portrait. However, Zeus , king of the Gods, desired her.
He came to her chamber in the form of golden rain and impregnated her. Instead of paying attention to idealizing her physical appearance, Rembrandt captures the passion felt by a woman on seeing her lover. Catherine the Great of Russia purchased the painting in for the Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg, where it still resides.
The painting was restored by Dutch Title: Het Joodse bruidje. Year: c.
0コメント