Rembrandt’s Syndics and His Later Portraits

you [Music] you in the last lecture we looked at self-portraits by Rembrandt which he painted and etched throughout his career we saw that he presents himself in many different guises from a gifted young melancholic to a self-assured Renaissance man to imposing and unsparing old master today I'm going to talk about this famous picture and about Rembrandt's later career in particular the works that were actually commissioned by his various patrons today we're going to deal with just one decade beginning in the mid 16 50s when he was a great celebrity in the Netherlands and mostly on account of his legs a famous all over Europe as well for a Rembrandt this is a period of financial and personal troubles that hardly surface in his work at a time when he made some of his most wonderful pictures for clients who understood his strengths first I just like us to look at the image on the screen and a few details I'll show you for a minute or two and then I'll start talking again you you five men with hats sixth in the back without a hat all in the paneled room was light coming in softly from the upper left they're made to seem a little higher than we are looking down a trick of perspective as though they were on a raised dais the paneling back the paneling in the room suggests why the picture was probably painted to hang in a room like this one well above the paneling the bareheaded man is a servant gentlemen keep their hats on indoors and these are not just any gentlemen these are officials of the amsterdam guild of Draper's cloth merchants whose duty was to grade and certify the quality of cloth produced in Holland or imported not tedious work you might think but it was important the cloth trade was a huge moneymaker in the Netherlands a lot of money and prestige road on their judgments tedious to paint their portrait you might think kind of like photographing the Supreme Court justices or the LA County Board of Supervisors but Rembrandt created a kind of variety and excitement and even surprise the row of their heads isn't it even but it's irregular the poses are not easy but attentive as though we needed to be assured of the reliability of these men they're sober identical costumes elevate them socially and unify them the man in the center has the book open and with his hand gesture he seems to ask us to inspect it these men aren't there is a collection of mere individuals but there is there is a group charged with a shared public responsibility they're shown as serious men serious but not to be confused with gloomy or Moody in fact their emotions were absolutely no consequence to the people for whom the picture was painted that and the people for whom the picture was painted to impress nevertheless there are some powerful individual portraits maybe none more than the man who stands or is actually in the act of rising this gives a kind of urgency to the portrait his name is full Kurt Young's and Rembrandt wanted to get him right as you see from the drawings he made for the painting the messy drawing on the left was an attempt to try out poses for the trio at the left side of the picture full cajones stands in the middle and looks down at the book then at the right hand drawing Rembrandt had a better idea folkert would look at the viewer then while he was painting the picture he changed it again the x-ray shows multiple heads as you see all across a few more than we see now and second from the left there's full Kurt standing but we also see to the left of him a dramatically rising figure we have now the rising figure was painted over the standing one but it's visible in the x-ray because there's a lot of lead white in it and lead is mostly what blocks x-rays and shows up on the film remember it does something here that no painter of a Dutch group portrait had ever thought to do and by now there were many dozens of group portraits painted that is he makes everybody look at us that gives a concentration and a connection to the viewer that not even Rembrandt had tried to achieve in his breakthrough commission just thirty years later the members of the surgeons guild being taught Anatomy by dr. Nicholas taupe a couple of men in the back look out at us but the others look towards their teacher or the cadaver or the book at the lower right each of the things involved and what this picture is about which is the transmission of knowledge this painting is about accountability accountability to the guild for exercising expert judgment and responsibilities to society for the quality of the goods we're a commodity essential to Dutch prosperity prosperity they present themselves as incorruptible none of them evades our glance in fact they do the opposite one of them our friend Folker young with the unforgettable head seeks us out as he rises up seeming to challenge the viewer not merely meet our gaze the individual heads project an alert presence and they hint at complex personalities you can see everywhere how the brushwork too varies depending on the job it's doing building up flesh tones with careful touches or describing the highlight on a black cloth with a couple of fluids switchbacks of light gray the paint is built up in patches to suggest the texture and the weight of the carpet on the table or its scum bold to suggest here the pattern of the woven into it and the white of the edges of the pages which dragged over the canvas and has a kind of crumbly texture but for the men's hands here at the far right the paint behaves differently Rembrandt applies it with a kind of effortless liquid strokes well for the sake of comparison let's look at a couple of contemporary group portraits one of these you probably know this is friends houses group portrait of the governors of a charitable institution in Harlem Hulse gets credit for injecting life into this unpromising type of picture and I think Rembrandt must have known this composition Rembrandt must have liked the way that Hulse gave that irregularity to the spacing of the men's bar and their heads but he kept everybody behind the table and he changed the action remember and did directing it at us at the viewer and of course house painted us differently as you can imagine giving an illusion of three dimensions here with broad areas of light and shadow painting wet paint into wet paint leaving the marks of the brush visible Rembrandt's buildup of paint is thicker in places richer more translucent more varied this is a way of working that he taught his pupils such as Ferdinand bol who became very good at it but then in the 1640s and 50s when tastes changed toward a more smooth and blond and elegant painting style bowl went with the new taste which is where the patronage lay and he prospered while Rembrandt went on in his own direction as you'll be seeing bowl helps you appreciate what Rembrandt did with the formula wear bow cropped the scene close Rembrandt lets his breathe in a bigger room where bowl has his men doing the conventional thing looking every which way Rembrandt gives the action more cohesion here are three men at the far left three from each of the pictures pulse on the far left is consistently fluid Rembrandt at the right rough and vibrant bull in the middle smooth with taut skin and well-groomed hair the features of Boles men are sharp and the likenesses are actually probably good but there's not much complexity evident in those faces nevertheless his lighter and tighter portraits of people who look Moore's wave a suave rather and better mannered were evidently better able to project the self images of that upper bourgeoisie and region class that he served Rembrandt bucked that trend in the 1650s right through to the end of his life despite that there were important patrons for him after the Nightwatch and before the syndics of the drake verse guild there had been another group portrait in 1656 the surgeons guild of amsterdam commissioned another anatomy lesson with members looking on this time conducted by dr. johan de mon this is what you see exhibited in the Rijksmuseum all that's left after a fire in 1723 but luckily a Rembrandt made a drawing of it complete with an elaborate frame showing ten figures Oh No not counting the cadaver that is who was by the way a 21 year old Flemish tailor and criminal named Doris Fontaine and there are indications in the drawing above that there was a great high room with her arched ceiling here's the drawing with the surviving fragment outlined to show you how much was lost what we have left here is an attendant surgeon doctor Haysbert cocoon and an elegant pose holding the top of the skull that dr. Damon has removed before he began to dissect the brain with his skilled hands and we have the stunningly foreshortened body which recalls many Renaissance exercises in perspective starting with Montana's dead Christ which remember him probably didn't see but the chances are better that he came across this contemporary Italian itching and took up the challenge Rembrandt's composition at the left here at the bottom was symmetrical his picture space high and shallow both reflecting the interests he had in the classicism of the high Renaissance and very different from the anatomy lesson of dr. taupe here which is irregular and agitated both these pictures hung in the guild headquarters the up they're called The Vow a repurposed medieval gate serving as a way house then and now quite a nice cafe Rembrandt's third public commission in these last year's was the largest and the most prestigious and the most conspicuous of all it came at about the same time as the Commission for the Draper's guild but it was very different it was literally history painting that is picturing a historical event this one described in the histories of Tacitus I'm showing you a picture taken when it was lent to the rax museum to give you a sense of the scale the figures are over life-sized the painting is now in Stockholm where you can see it much better than Rembrandt's audience ever did the subject is the oath-taking of the ancient battalions the ancestors of the Dutch who were a Germanic tribe living along the Rhine during the Roman occupation of their territory there were barbarians as the Romans called them the Batavian 's were incited to rebel by a romanized German war Lord called Gaius Claudius Sevilla's they met in a sacred grove in 69 AD and they heard civiles give a fiery speech tasida says that Sevilla's was able in his words to bind the whole assembly with barbarous rights and national forms of both well the Batavian revolt lasted a year was finally put down by the Romans but Tacitus is story about that oath of rebellion never died up close the painting makes a staggering impression of roughness and sketchiness but we aren't seeing the painting in the way that anything close to Rembrandt's original intention like the anatomy lesson of dr. Damon that we just saw it started life in a prestigious location it got mutilated and fortunately is recorded in a drawing by Rembrandt which you will see again in a minute the location was the newly finished city hall of Amsterdam at the center of the city massive the eighth wonder of the world at its time the grandest expression of Dutch civic pride and spending power you see it in a slightly later painting since Napoleonic times it's been the royal palace and still is the center of the city starting in 1656 of the city officials began installing large paintings on edifying subjects in the meeting rooms and in the halls they were commissioned from leading artists in particular those two former pupils of Rembrandt you've heard before Ferdinand bull we already met and Javert flink these were and are huge and colorful they're in what the British and the next century would call the Grand Manor bright legible figures who obey the dress code and the rules of classical decorum that they inherited from Italy France and in their own time from Rubens the pictures carried moral instruction for Dutch civic officials be brave like the Roman general Fabricius at the left here whose when his Greek enemy purists tried to frighten him away with an elephant who makes it appearance and her left or be humble and resist taking bribes the way Correa said aunt Atossa did on the left there when the Samnite ambassadors came loaded with a bribe of gold and he refused and went on cooking turnips for dinner the pupils were given Commission's but not Rembrandt at this point he was fifty an old master acknowledged as a great one but he was seen as a holdout against these newer trends I've talked about and on top of that with the reputation of being proud and difficult it didn't help that these were the years of being overextended financially and of declaring bankruptcy when the city authorities decided to have eight round-topped pictures painted for the galleries with stories from their earliest history they turned a covert flink flink had just gotten started when he died in 1660 Plan B was to insist a group of other artists including several more Rembrandt pupils and Rembrandt himself who accepted the job and the fee for filling in for his former pupil his assignment was the meeting in the sacred grove and the oath of the battalions flink had already made a drawing for that it shows Julius Claudius Sevilla's here at the far right in a turban and a few Batavian 'he's all dressed his Roman soldiers having a decorous handshake I would think that Rembrandt was given that drawing and was probably bored by it he also surely saw an earlier image of the scene from the illustrated history of the Netherlands by Otto Fontaine on the Left showing the sacred grove and a lot of handshaking going on by men in 16th century costumes anachronistic but this was obviously a means of drawing a parallel between the brave Batavian 's of old and the Netherlanders of the 16th century who revolted from their Spanish Overlord this was a key act in the foundation of the the whole foundation narrative of the Dutch Republic which is exactly the point of picturing the scene from Tacitus there's nothing barbarian in either picture after all these were your relatives a few years earlier go art historians made a digital reconstruction of Rembrandt's painting based on the drawing and projected up on the wall where it once was which was an interesting exercise but it couldn't recapture anything like the force of the painting especially since there was a lot of ambient light to spoil the picture what's more successful though is the digital image itself Rembrandt's drawing + shade added because it suggests the sheer expanse of empty echoey shadowy space above the table that's a device of stage design and atmosphere making that only Rembrandt would have used well the painting was returned to him and Rembrandt evidently cut out a rectangle that we have today something like one seventh of the original canvas which he altered by extending the table and adding a figure at the left he didn't succeed in selling it 70 years after his death it was auctioned in Amsterdam to a Swedish buyer nobody knows for sure why the picture was returned to him there are a few likely reasons one is that the size of the figure figures here in relation to the whole area of the picture is a lot less in relation to that of the other paintings in the series which is true but sounds more like a rationalization than the principal reason the other is an issue of decorum those barbaric looking barbarians nobody had ever seen human figures painted this way let alone their own ancestors in a grab-bag of costumes with their crude features just blocked in with rough broad strokes up close they're like luminous ghosts although for all the crudity they do drink from delicate glasses these Batavian czar definitively barbarians none more than their leader he doesn't lead them in handshakes the oath is taken upon swords the clear promise of bloodshed Tacitus says that Claudius civilus was disfigured evidently missing an eye and Rembrandt shows him full face his war wound making him look even more implacable and wearing an outlandish crown and gold chain the way Rembrandt presents the hero proclaims that it took a man of raw and scary strengths as well as good arguments to bind the unruly battalions into one rebellious force the force that could actually overthrow their Roman masters and secure their freedom what to conceive this scene was an assignment that suited Rembrandt perfectly because his imagination ran to remote times and acts of heroic a patriotic heroism and the themes of national solidarity that's what his oil sketch of about 20 years earlier called the Concorde of the state seems to be about an ideal of citizenship that Rembrandt places in the Middle Ages and the idea that in times of threat you put aside your differences and you act as one this Dutch motto says it says unity in unity is strength and this is the message two of Rembrandt's group portrait of Amsterdam militiamen mostly businessmen and tradesmen wearing old fashioned military gear Rembrandt imagines are acting as latter day nights in the service of their City marching out while we're on the subject and looking at militiamen I want to show you three Rembrandt paintings that embody this theme of service which seems to have been important to Rembrandt at first is the portrait of a 50 year old man with a sympathetic face and a glorious gilt sash he holds the staff with the flag of a militia company he's an ensign or a standard bearer of the company which comes as a surprise if you know that incense were almost always much younger than this and unmarried because incense went into battle unarmed leading the charge and were killed quicker than men of any other rank mind you Amsterdam militia companies saw very little militant military action and practically no casualties but they did practice and remained ready Anson's are usually pictured as swashbuckling types remember and painted 120 years earlier a man and stage he posed this typical event sense who floated themselves as though no harm could possibly come to them this man wears an extravagantly old fashioned officer outfit and in fact this may not be a commissioned portrait at all but what the Dutch called a true nee a picture of a single figure and fancy dress made for sale something I talked about in the first couple of lectures he's a kind of emblem of brave almost belligerent defiance this wasn't Rembrandt's invention instance were beloved subjects for print makers and other artists who pictured soldiers in all their bravery their finery and their ostentation a little closer in context this is an actual commissioned portrait of an ensign by Tomas de Kaiser a leading portrait painter and Amsterdam before Rembrandt came there from Leiden and took a lot of his business away the man is proud gorgeously dressed and acting the part in a kind of stage setting that the artist has invented for him 20 years later comes this man who may have served as an ensign for many years when I worked at the Met we had no idea what this man's name was then the Amsterdam archivist search militia records for instance in their 50s and found exactly exactly one a certain florist shope the oldest ensign in the Civic Guard in 1654 the year the picture is dated the mention in shopes inventory of a life-sized portrait strengthened the case soap was that actually the well-to-do owner of a glass and mirror making firm whatever personal pride may have caused him to order the portrait there's no bravado in at all but instead a kind of tremendous dignity a florist soap chose to be defined and remembered as a man doing his duty living nearby and florists soaps neighborhood in Amsterdam was a man well known to Rembrandt Yan six who commissioned a portrait that has nothing to do with chivalric ideals or patriotism but it is one of his greatest works and for me the most beautiful and the best preserved of all Rembrandt's portraits his clothes especially the red garment over his shoulders have come in for a lot of speculation we've learned recently from the costume specialist Marika divan Cole that John six is wearing riding clothes this long gray coat is called a Cossack and the Scarlet cloak here that had come into fashion but isn't seen in many portraits he's also riding gear six chose to be portrayed here as a country gentleman rather than the city's sophisticate or intellectual which is the guys that Rembrandt had already given him seven years earlier in this amazing etching of young six posed casually the window reading in a room full of literary and artistic and aristocratic props in the painting six is pulling on his gloves as if he were leaving leading mm-hmm leaving the scene there's something intimate in the gesture and in his momentary look but the wonder of the portrait is the painting of these hands I mean y'all six was a connoisseur of painting it's tempting to think that Rembrandt's virtuosity with a brush and costume and hands here was intended to appeal to this particularly sophisticated client who was a virtuoso himself a man who could appreciate the amazing freedom and suggestiveness here this is Rembrandt revealing that power of suggestion that is the hallmark of his last dozen years for another gentleman client nine years later Rembrandt put on over-the-top performance of a different kind a full-length full-on equestrian portrait ten feet high the man is not a nobleman as you'd think but in Amsterdam merchants Frederick Rijo who had the honor of taking part in a cavalcade that marked the visit to the city by Mary Stewart and Prince William 1/3 an honor he didn't want anybody to forget ever wearin must have charged him a fortune for the picture despite the fact that he evidently put an assistant on the job for to work on the horse and the background now equestrian portraits were rare in Holland large ones non-existent with one exception that Rembrandt didn't have to go very far to see this is Paula spotters large portrait of the wealthy dear dope a cousin of yon six and the son of the man Rembrandt made immortal dr. Nicholas taupe the anatomy teacher I go into these relationships not just because well because remember hats success depended not only on his genius but also on his Amsterdam Network the younger topes portrait here seems to have talked Rembrandt the basics at least and suggested a bit of fancy equitation that riyal could do too recently the National Gallery made a large composite x-ray film of the picture on the left and these are here we are you have to understand this is some okay Oh again the the rays are blocked by dense substances in all paint layers on the surface or underneath and it's mainly lead white that artists used for light areas in this case when the conservators turned the x-ray of this ten-foot canvas 90 degrees counterclockwise that is rotating that way they could recognize an entire different composition underneath earlier and you see it shows a similar man in a different in a different costume similar kind of hat and perhaps of holding a fowling-piece standing in a landscape so evidently real had Amsterdam had Rembrandt paid him in a conventional setting landscape and then real or both of them had a bigger idea for a real to mount up and Rembrandt obliged saving a lot of money in the process by using the same canvas over again the painting has darkened more than most so we can't see the background very well and the horse is probably finished as I said by a studio hand but the rider is absolutely superb with a gorgeous costume embroidered with gold lots of white linen feathers in his hat and an expression of calm mastery real sits a horse that's performing under his total control and in doing that he displays the gentlemanly ideals of virtuosity ease and self-discipline back to a related ideal and the theme we encountered in the oath of the Batavian 'he's courage and patriotism in the defense of one's people in the mid 1650s where I'm Brandt painted this famous enigma showing a young horseman armed to the teeth his weapons and clothing identify him as polish for a long time it was assumed that it was commissioned portrait above a particular Polish man unknown but there's no evidence for that and it doesn't conform to the traditions of equestrian portraiture various allegorical readings have been proposed and all those the most persuasive and durable has been was published in a famous article by my teacher Julius held held argued that the young man was an imaginary Polish soldier who was meant to be seen as a latter-day Christian Knight Polish light cavalry men like this were actually out there defending the borders of Europe against the Ottoman Turks he'll pointed out that Rembrandt probably got his horse from the well-known engraving by dürer and I'll show that to you in Reverse to make things a little easier Durer not only supplied the model for his horse but also the idea for his painting that is that there might be a modern equivalent of the Christian Knight of a kind described by Erasmus in the me les cristianos the night of Christ moving fearlessly through a shadowy landscape of unseen dangers the picture might well have been commissioned rather than painted on spec and it has some weak spots the top of the boot the blanket the horse's tail and various other things look to be have been painted by a weaker hand somebody in the studio and for a while some specialists even had doubts about the attribution to Rembrandt at all but the best parts are so fun and so typical the conception of the picture is so original and Noble that I think the doubts have pretty much disappeared well we've been talking about Rembrandt's historical imagination his power to conjure up situations from the remote past that get to the heart of the matter whatever that matter is this was still one of Rembrandt's selling points in the contest for clients they probably helped him secure commission from a Sicilian who doesn't seem to have cared much about the subject matter but was definitely attracted to celebrity artists he was called dunk antonio Ruffo a roofer lived in a palace in Messina that he was busy filling up with pictures and through a middleman he ordered a painting from Rembrandt of a philosopher which philosopher wasn't specified the choice of Aristotle seems to have been Rembrandt's rather than Bravo's when it arrived it seems to have pleased Don Antonio he ordered a companion piece from the Bolognese painter where Chino sometimes later grouchy no not having been given the subject of Rembrandt's picture had to guess me guess that it must have been a fizzy animist who somebody who just judges character from your features that's cold and he proposed that he paint a car isn't because mug refer for Ruffo as a suitable counterpart well where she knows painting has been lost if it ever existed but we have the drawing that he made to give Ruffa the idea of what he was proposing Rembrandt's Aristotle I think is one of his greatest active historical imagination neither he nor anybody else knew what Aristotle actually looked like or Homer for that matter whose bust you bust you see here is not based on an actual likeness in Plutarch's life of Alexander the Great Aristotle was the tutor of Alexander Alexander in third turn thought so highly of Aristotle that he carried a copy of the Iliad in a special casket wherever he went all three people are presented in the picture and connected Alexander is there in profile at the far left on a gold medallion hanging from the heavy gold chain that Aristotle fingers with his left hand and he rests his other hand on homers head wisdom from one has passed through the teacher to the pupil of Alexander transmission is the theme it's also you remember the theme of dr. taupe and his pupils and the anatomy book and of the preacher unstow with his troubled wife and the Bible he in between the teacher as an intermediary for essential knowledge there's something else at play here Julius held wrote an article about this picture to giving an interpretation that's proved durable in 50 years since he published it Aristotle isn't contemplating the bust of homer as the old title used to have it he's not even looking at it he's looking past it lost in thought held suggested that Aristotle's thoughts dwelt on the freedom represented by homer a pure poet without any worldly entanglements or rewards and his thoughts dwelt on his own life full of entanglements and rewards serving Kings did Aristotle and being favored with gold chain and way a sign of his captivity to worldly affairs the picture shows an eminent man pondering the price he's paid for his place in the world the action here is purely mental and emotional we read that in his hands and his weary face his shadow eyes shadow dies and in the atmosphere in the room which Rembrandt creates with the play of light that light of course is entirely an illusion there's no light it's just paint but it gives the marble bust a nearly flesh color and something like an inner light and it makes the gold chain glitter seductively it gives the flowing pleated gown a palpable texture and a believable luminosity the paint model's everything so subtly that the light it creates seems to embody the complexities of Aristotle's thought and his situation in the world my friend the late Walter lead care went further and wrote that I'm quoting him Rembrandt represents the figure not as a sage from whom wisdom emanates but as a man who contemplates ethical problems and puzzles them out from it for himself well what Ruffo thought about this picture we don't know but he ordered two companion pieces for it from Rembrandt from remember at alone a homer and an Alexander the Great the Alexander has never been identified although this picture in glass go has been claimed to be the painting Ruffo ordered and received and that he complained about in a cranky letter he wrote to the Dutch consul in Messina telling him to report back to the Netherlands just quite quoting now just how little pleased he who commissioned the Alexander that is himself it is with the painting which cost him more than the Aristotle and that the Alexander was painted on four pieces of canvas sewn together and these four scenes are horrible beyond words besides in time they're gonna crack and consequently the canvas as a whole will be ruined said person Ruffo himself said person does not own a single painting with patched canvas among his two hundred examples of the best painters in europe goes on Rembrandt maybe in order to save work or perhaps crushed by his many tasks in order to transform this Alexander into a half-length figure since at the start it was nothing more than a head on a single canvas decided to extend the canvas but lengthwise then seeing that the painting was too narrow he added another piece length width width wise and on and on art collector and patron mm-hmm so this painting probably resembles the one that Ruffo complains about so bitterly but it wasn't it large from the head as he claims and it doesn't match up in size but has survived after many misfortunes is the Homer when Ruffo got this picture he believed it was unfinished and sent it back to Holland to refer to Rembrandt to finish which remember it evidently did and returned it to Ruffo the painting has has come down to us as some of the glowing richness and deep seriousness of the Aristotle although it's been through a fire again a fire and was cut down what it might have looked like in 1664 has been a quest for specialists for many years the evidence for that is first of all an inventory stating that the Homer is pictured with two pupils then there's a drawing by Rembrandt on the screen it's clearly connected to the fragment of Homer but with different portion of different proportions from the Aristotle that was supposed to match then there's a painting by Arctic elder who was Rembrandt's pupil in the 1660s and who made a number of paintings later on that reflects compositions by Rembrandt that were in the studio when he was on the basis of all this evidence and the bit of writing pad that you can just see in the lower right corner I'm not making this up it's there a bit of writing pad in the fingertips of a scribe our colleague arts form of a Turing made a sketch to suggest the original extent of Rufus painting which he thinks was not horizontal like our dead elders but was vertical here's the sketch I think this is perfectly plausible but it leads a lot for the imagination remember at subject Homer dictating was extremely rare in our day Rome remember it seems to have relied on a fanciful biography of Homer that was attributed to Herodotus in the 17th century which says that after many adventures homer sailed to the island of Chios became a tutor and dictated his epics to his pupils blind as he was even now after such serious mutilation the figure of Homer glows with a sort of soft mystical light he embodies the paradox that although eyesight is important and from whom could it be more important than a painter or a collector though eyesight is important it is the mind's eye that sees more it's imaginative vision not literal vision that brings immortality to the poet and the painter I'm going to end this talk about commissions in Rembrandt's last year's with some clear proof that he had admirers in high places these are two of the most powerful people in Amsterdam Jakob Tripp aged about 85 and his wife margarita - here who was somewhat younger Tripp died in 1661 so it is possible that Rembrandt painted this portrait posthumously Tripp was a partner in a vast commercial enterprise involving mining metallurgy gun magnet manufacture arms-dealing and foreign trade his wife was from another wealthy commercial family that hears people that have business partnerships with the trips so their marriage was a part of a family alliance that was reinforced in subsequent generations by more intermarriage Margaret added here sits in a chair that's turned a bit towards her husband following Convention and pair portraits but she turns to us the viewers fully frontal that's unnerving it's opposed that has associations with royalty even divinity it suggests other qualities - more secular and moral and I mean candor openness qualities that were attributed especially to old age since antiquity the paintings hang together in the National Gallery in London and quite nearby there's a second portrait of margherita that was painted at the same time and to see it as a joke because in the small when the raking light reveals her Luth loose flesh and her toothless Ness there's a debate over whether Rembrandt made the small picture as a study for the larger one or is an independent work of art of a more convenient size I'm inclined to think it was a sketch or a trial intended for the large picture and that has he got her features right he had a different idea possibly suggested by martyr of margarita to hear herself to change the pose change the lighting and transform an image of frailty and vulnerability into one of strength and vision in the detail on the right scene head on her collapsed mouth is no longer her main feature the relief of her face is lower less emphatic and it casts gentler shadows her cap is wider and there's more hair in front of it making the symmetrical form that conveys something like majesty the great big ruff that she wears in both was already old fashioned 20 years before this but many older women stuck with it and making a virtue out of ignoring fashion it's strange to see Rembrandt using such an exact and you could almost say old-fashioned way of painting that elaborate folded edge but it is what Rembrandt did he must have respected that convention in doing so like the gloves that she holds the ruff was also an advertisement of wealth the gloves were made of lace and extremely expensive and so was the Ferland over garment she wears her husband wears something similar at a bard a medieval survival that we've seen worn by older men who present themselves as learned or otherwise eminent and he's got a silver cane at 85 Tripp may have used that stick to help support himself but it's here too as a sign of patriarchal majesty it's ceremonial like the one that Rembrandt himself holds like a sceptre in the Frick self-portrait of just a few years earlier having these on the screen together shows how Rembrandt used another compositional device here his own figure fills the frame the trips are smaller by comparison Rembrandt's head is not quite frontal hers is the difference in color and tonality have a lot to do with a relatively worn condition of the trip portraits and the surprising yellow that Rembrandt gave himself plus the usual variables of studio lighting four-footed up photographers Jakob trip a wears informal indoor clothing a big robe that is part of Hubbard and part Japanese kimono both things favoured by those who could afford them and a nightcap of a type that we see in many domestic portraits this is a man who's presented as no longer in the world you might say not long for the world Rembrandt was nearing 60 himself an age when you were thought to be old Rembrandt was I mean a trip was a 85 and very very old the age of Rembrandt's long dead parents conventionally that's an age for men of wisdom and for women of perseverance and devotion to family jakob head is a miracle it is firm and solidly constructed but with a soft broken surface and a welter of touches that reveal the man's patchy dry skin and wispy hair everyone who'd look at Tripps portrait knew that he was a great eminence in the last years of his life he and his wife had seven children of whom two brothers were earning a fortune in business in the Netherlands and especially abroad in the Baltic if you've been to the rax museum since it reopened three years ago you will have seen this very large painting by a large fund a burden of the trip foundry in Sweden where cannons were made and exported to anybody who paid for them they were international arms dealers at the time Rembrandt was painting their parents the brothers Lewis and Hendrik trip we're building the grandest house in the city actually two houses separate but with a single double-wide facade to get around city regulations designed by the leading neoclassical architect of his generation and adorned all over the top with relief sculptures of arms and armor it's likely that this new house was the occasion for the commissioning of Rembrandt's portraits by this time a lot of artists had already painted the trips people who evidently either enjoyed the process or were generous and giving pictures away to their family and friends or both the other artists like this one worked in a kind of mid-century style following the new convention so brighter more elegant portraits several of them had been pupils event like this one Nicholas Moss who's thoroughly competent he painted this around the same time as the Rembrandt portrait and the comparison helps us see both painters better mosses trip the more accessible cosseted and honored by all that red velvet Rembrandt's trip is more complex and certainly more austere that's a fair description of both these portraits Rembrandt shows these people first in their social roles as faithful man and wife they've been rewarded for their virtue with remarkable old age and they've accumulated not just material wealth but also a kind of riches of experience oh this is perfectly conventional for pair portraits what's not conventional is Rembrandt's suggestion that both of them have been to depths that we can't reach or fathom that their wealth may be in their awareness of the world now their knowledge their wisdom qualities that remember it already understands as he approaches their age himself in the last lecture I'm going to turn to another well-known painting and explore Rembrandt's final history pictures we'll see how he conveys the essence of some powerful stories and how they inspire him to take his visionary technique to its limit thank you [Applause] you [Applause]

Channel: Yale University Art Gallery

Views: 7,987

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: Yale, University, Art, Gallery, rembrandt, The Syndics

Id: a4OhXe6Gkes

Length: 54min 48sec (3288 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 09 2016