Rembrandt the Dramatist and the Heart of the Matter

you you good afternoon everybody in the first lecture we traced Rembrandt's path from Leiden to the great metropolis of Amsterdam where he found patrons among the rich and powerful we looked at portraits and Latin narrative paintings and we ended up with this rousing life-size picture of the Israelite strongman Samson showing him thrown to the ground and blinded brought low by his own moral weakness today we're gonna concentrate on more history paintings since these were the works that Rembrandt expected to be judged by never mind how lucrative portrait painting might might be for him and was now when I say history paintings I mean scenes based on stories whether biblical or Midland or mythological or historical they belong to a category defined century before centuries before in the early Renaissance by Leon Battista Alberti as story a these works took the highest were the highest of things that an artist could aspire to the most demanding work that an artist could do to put across a narrative in a picture required Education imagination mastery of the human figure in action or in repose and the ability to compose a scene intelligibly so you could tell what's going on all of this was meant simultaneously to give people pleasure and to embody the moral and religious values that people needed to live virtuous lives as a history painter Rembrandt was original and subtle to a degree that few artists have ever rivaled today we're gonna look at a group of history painting starting with this picture it represents the sacrifice of Isaac by his father Abraham which hangs in the Hermitage in st. Petersburg it's about six and a half feet high I'm going to show you a few details I'm not gonna say anything we're just gonna look after that I'll say quite a lot this is the climax of a story I need to retell at some length it's a story Rembrandt and his audience knew very well it's from the book of Genesis Abraham was a descendant of Adam and Noah he was the first patriarch of the Jews and their leader at some unspecified time before recorded history Abraham had everything including the land of Canaan that God had given him but he and his wife Sarah were childless Abraham asks God to give him a son and God promises that promises him offspring as numerous as the stars Sarah knows she's barren and she brings her slave girl to Abraham he conceives a son by her Ishmael but later when Abraham is 99 years old God makes a solemn solemn covenant with him and says that Sarah who's 96 will bear an illegitimate son who will be Abraham's heir that son here is born and grows into young manhood and then despite all God's promises he makes a strange and shocking demand of Abraham now I'm quoting from Genesis God tested Abraham and said to him take your son your only son Isaac whom you love and go to the land of Moriah and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains I shall tell you of so Abraham rose early in the morning saddled his donkey and took two of his young men with him and his son Isaac and he cut the wood for the burnt offering and arose and went to the place of which God had told him on the third day Abraham lifted up his eyes and saw the place from afar and then Abraham said to his young men stay here with the donkey I and the boy will go over there and worship and come again to you and Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering and laid it on Isaac his son and he took his hand and the fire and the knife and Isaac said to his father Abraham behold the fire and the wood but where is the lamb for a burnt offering Abraham said God will provide the lamb for a burnt offering my son when they came to the place Abraham built the altar there and laid the wood in order and bound Isaac his son and laid him on the altar on top of the wood then Abraham reached out his hand and took the knife to slaughter his son but the angel of the Lord called to him from heaven and said Abraham Abraham do not lay your hand on the boy or do anything to him for now I know that you fear God seeing you have not withheld your son your only son from me and Abraham lifted up his eyes and looked and beheld behind him a ram caught in a thicket by his horns and Abraham went and took the RAM and offered it as a burnt offering instead of his son and the Lord said because you have done this and have not withheld your son your only son I will surely bless you and I will surely multiply your offspring as the stars in heaven and the sand that is on the seashore now notice after God commands him to kill Isaac nothing is said about Abraham hesitating he leaves Sarah to go and kill their son without even telling her when Isaac asks his father what's going on where's the lamb we don't have a lamb to sacrifice Abraham misleads him and he's in the act of killing Abraham Isaac when God in the form of an angel stops him remember it has him dropped the knife Abraham in other words is obedient to the point of murdering his beloved son in the future leader of his tribe so Abraham passed the test it is a strange story and the meaning of it has been debated for centuries had been before a Rembrandt and still is what kind of God is this what kind of faith is this we'll return to those questions I want to talk about how Rembrandt tells the story visually he makes it perfectly legible our point of view is close up to the action and the compositions is a whole series of switchbacks spiraling upward from the bottom starting at the victim isaacs feet and going up through his body I'm curving back through the twisting figure of his father and ending up in the hand of the liberating angel pointing up to heaven our I travel Zin other words from earth to sky up from the physical and the horrific to the unseen divine and Abraham is the pivot turning away from his task in his moment of sudden awareness Isaac isn't resisting and there are no signs of struggle his arms are under his body so Abraham bound them as he do with the legs of a sheep but he could hardly have done that unless his son had submitted to him Abraham goes about the task of butchering with experienced efficiency it covers his son's face and eyes with his big hand and he forces his head back to expose more throat to the knife in thinking how to put this sequence of actions into a single picture Rembrandt didn't have to start cold this was one of the most popular Old Testament subjects what got him going was looking at other artists solutions that's often the case with Rembrandt he based his composition pretty closely on a picture by his teacher Peter last month much smaller agree sigh in gray and brown perhaps made as a model for a print that he never made Rembrandt makes it all simpler and more direct he eliminates the boys fearful expression he puts Abraham kneeling on the ground he makes the angels a rival a gentler event and he clears away the litter from the foreground now lost man had been to Italy and I imagine he knew many other versions of the subject maybe even the most famous of all the competition for bronze doors for this building the medieval DAP baptistry across from the Cathedral of Florence in 1401 sculptors were seven sculptors were given the required shape quatrefoil and the subject the sacrifice of Isaac which had to include the father in the son an angel two companions a donkey and a ram the finalists were these two replaying the contest is a favorite classroom exercise that we don't have time for but Brunelleschi's solution on the left is more symmetrical almost diagrammatic and it's layout Guilbert t's design though on the right has a big sweeping arc that pulls things together a more unified action in other words that evidently got him the job as well as the very greco-roman looking figure of isaac kneeling leaning away from his father artists of the next generation studied the emeriti Donatello's group is in the round in marble - an angel with Isaac kneeling his face turning away from the knife Andrea del Sarto s' solution for a painting was also upright in format with Isaac in a graceful pose it's a kind of variant of Donatello's closer to home Rubens who was a strong influence on Rembrandt painted Isaac kneeling gracefully and an imposing Abraham in a blood-red robe advancing and twisting Rubens had his composition reproduced in the engraving you see in the middle but Rembrandt didn't pay any attention to Rubens when he came to the subject himself from dozens of pictures of the subject though I want to pick just one more the great rethink her of traditional stories Caravaggio brought them down to earth he put the scene into Italian Hill Country as though it were happening in the present he stresses Abraham's brutality we don't see a trace of anguish or surprise in his face and he emphasizes Isaac's sheer terror while Rembrandt's painting was still in his studio he produced another version that reveals some of the working methods at this point of his career he's just left our lenders house in Amsterdam and studio which he ran amicably and moved in with his new bride Saskia - rented quarters in a former sugar warehouse facing the Amstel River still the same fine neighborhood as before he had taken students and assistants with him business was good he was the most sought-after and best paid at best paid portrait painter in the city and he was making history paintings large and small he was the most successful teacher in Holland charging higher than average fees for his instruction in drawing and painting he was selling his own work and if he wanted to signing and selling his pupils work as well including copies of his originals and works in his style that was his legal right under the rules of the guild and he was a part-time art dealer buying and selling other artists works well the second version on the right is similar but different for one thing you can see it's much lighter and brighter that's because the picture on the left and the Hermitage is covered with a thick layer of yellowish varnish applied by restorers not by Rembrandt that has darkened over the years and the Rembrandt the Hermitage is very slow to remove darkened varnishes disfiguring though they are and so many of its Rembrandt's are hard to see as a result but in the composition on the right you can see the big changes right away the angel arrives behind Abraham so the old man is even more surprised the Angels raised arm looks ready to administer a chop or at least halt the action in the background on the left the curly horn DRAM mentioned in Genesis has been added at the bottom is an old and unusual inscription Rembrandt fur omelet and over his Hill dirt 16:36 remember an altered and over painted it over painted has been discussed a lot but I think it means this in the sense of retouched it in order to finish or correct it the rethinking of the original composition may have started with this drawing where the angel has been moved already like a lot of Rembrandt test drawings this one seems to be by somebody in the studio maybe somebody the one who painted the second version which Rembrandt retouched in the sense of corrected the artist of the munich version here on the right is so close to Rembrandt's manner of painting that until the 20th century the picture was attributed to the master himself we don't know which of the talented people in the shop did it there there may have been several people working on it I've gone into this case history to give you a taste of some of the complicated judgments that have been a large part of Rembrandt studies during the past 50 years and here's a little test for you which of the heads of Abraham is better now to help you I took color out of the equation just look you might compare the hair for example the eyebrows mustache look at the mouth if you do that you may be clearer to you which is the more skillful one of them is definitely that I think and the other kind of exaggerated version of the other okay times up in any case I switched them on you now I'm switching them back sorry the workshop version is on the right the original on the left Rembrandt returned to this subject 20 years later in an etching and he treated it quite differently making it quieter and calmer that energetic spiral is gone there's no knife caught in midair the father's hand doesn't push down on the son's face Isaac kneels obediently and his father gently masks his eyes the angel appears behind them not flying but seemed to sheltering them under her wings and reaches around behind Abraham to restrain his arm this is a picture of inner anguish much more than of physical violence averted it asks for a different response from the visitors viewer we'll see more of this kind of empathetic attitude in Rembrandt's later work he was obviously interested in Abraham and his dilemma he made three other edgings of scenes from Abraham's life a couple of years later he imagines a scene when Isaac was younger he shows the child playing between his father's legs or his loins you might say Abraham was over a hundred remember and Isaac was God's gift miraculous precious to him notice that is he fondles the chin of the boy he's almost touching his throat I don't think that's an accident I think it's a premonition of the sacrifice to come neither father nor could have known that but Rembrandt and his audience didn't know what they were familiar with the story they knew without gesture hinted that ten years afterward he painted the sacrifice Rembrandt imagines that moment heard from the story when Isaac who's been toting the firewood for his own sacrificial pyre without knowing it asks his father where the lamb is that they're going to sacrifice and Abraham says misleadingly God will provide this is all put across by expression and gesture which he describes with very few lines Abraham leans forward earnestly telling the lie with one hand on his heart and pointing up to heaven now his father's a good actor but Isaac looks at him steadily eyes shaded with what I read is a little squint of doubt the painting was designed to arouse strong sensations there's the boys vulnerable flesh the pious old man heartlessly following orders the merciful angel floating into clutch Abraham's wrist and the knife caught in midair it compresses the whole sequence of events some of which are shown while others are implied the piling up of the firewood for the pyre Abraham binding Isaac's hands behind his back is drawing the knife from the scabbard and raising it and the angel grabbing his wrist while he's speaking and the knife falling the sequence is accentuated by the design this spiral that I talked about from earlier actions up to later ones in the etching on the other hand the composition is compressed and the sequence of actions is suppressed what counts is that the angel embraces Abraham and that the three of them are locked together Isaac kneels submissively mouth open in anticipation Abraham's frown and open mouths still reflect his anguish at what he was going to do in the story we should ask what is the heart of the matter this is what Constantine Hodgins an early writer about Rembrandt said that the artist was seeking in his history paintings and why does Rembrandt make so much of this story I think it's the conflict of different obligations for Abraham he's a father the head of a family the leader of a tribe that has no other designated successor if Isaac dies but he's also a man of faith he's made a compact with God and now God has given him clear direct orders that violate violate his other obligations what why would a good and merciful God force such a terrible choice on him well for Calvin and other Protestants of Rembrandt's time people could be saved from damnation by making an act of faith Martin Luther's motto for this was Sola fidei you're justified by your faith not by your good works not by taking the sacraments but by faith alone this was a key difference with Catholicism Rembrandt's two pictures show an extreme act of faith Abraham had every human reason not to obey God not to kill his own son and heir to kill him would it be to go against nature against justice to go against love against human ethics against logic but God commanded it and he obeyed sir and Kierkegaard the Danish moral philosopher who wrote an influential book in 1843 called fear and trembling used the story of Abraham's sacrifice as an example of faith and obedience it was Kierkegaard in fact who coined a phrase for Abraham's act it was a leap of faith philosophers and theologians have debated it ever since and I should add that Muslims celebrate Abraham's obedience to God too they commemorate it at the feast festival of sacrifice the holiest Islamic of the year I tell a DA that comes at the end of the Hajj the annual pilgrimage to Mecca now in the Quran the version of Abraham's story parallels Genesis complete with the intervention of an angel and the lesson is similar if your devotion of God is complete and surpasses all others as Abraham's did God will spare you and bless you in these two treatments of the sacrifice of Isaac twenty years apart we've seen a shift in emphasis when he comes back to a subject that had called previously for dramatic physical action rembrandt substitutes something that's harder to depict by his actor's mental action awareness interchange and this opens up the possibility for history painting that it can offer us a deeper and more empathetic understanding of human situations let me give a few examples many of Rembrandt's other subjects involve revelation in some form revelation through an act of God or a God manifesting himself to humans the Supper at Emmaus is one of those stories that's told about the reappearances in disguise by the risen Christ to his followers in the days after his supposed resurrection which none of the disciples had actually seen and in which some of them were dubious about two of them were walking toward the village of Emmaus debating all this when Jesus whom they couldn't recognize fell in with them he pretended to know not to know what was going on with this resurrection business and so they told him he said that the scriptures had prophesized that the Messiah would suffer so why should they be surprised well it was late and so they invited him to stay with them at supper when they broke the bread their eyes were opened and they recognized him but he vanished from he vanished from sight Rembrandt's first go at this subject is this tiny panel with Christ silhouetted against a candle that spills golden light on the wall define light as though it were a huge halo one man shrinks back in horror and the other one down there in the dark on the left and you'll have to take my word for it has fallen over on the floor chair and all the woman working in the kitchen back here perceives nothing she's literally and figuratively in the dark it's a little demonstration piece of lighting and body acting especially since we can't see Christ's face just his mouth that's open to speak when he makes an etching of the subject five years later it's only four inches high and the showy aspect is gone Rembrandt moves in closer and tones down the physical action but there are various folk keep folksy props like the travelers staff and bag a man mangy dog looking up at the food on the right hold this for the sake of intimacy to bring the scene closer to the lives of real people Rembrandt probably never saw this picture which is the great example of down-home summer supper at Emmaus this painting by Caravaggio Christ is beardless hail olace and chooses to reveal himself to plain men in patched clothes it might be happening in the Roman trattoria you're ready er to believe that because everything is so vivid including the fruit basket that's perched there at the edge of the table poised and the shadow of the serving man on the wall remember I tried out another idea for Emmaus in a drawing to show Christ actually disappearing as the biblical texts say said that he did not easy and he set the scene in a spacious room at night the drawing did not lead to a painting or an etching but a few years later he revives the idea of the supper in a large space but it's different it's strange solemn kind of space with an ish like a chapel with Christ centered ceremoniously so that it recalls that other supper before the crucifixion when Christ instituted the Eucharist now there's no commotion no great drama of light just the reflexive recoil of the traveler on the left look at the young servant on the right he hasn't noticed anything this revelation is now a private one an inner one at this point Rembrandt is putting ideas into paint but he's been studying in the work of his famous predecessors including Leonardo da Vinci whose genius tree and symmetry in the Last Supper were pictorial devices that Rembrandt had avoided using so far but now his Emmaus is a response I think to the engraving here at the top that reproduces Leonardo's Last Supper Rembrandt in fact drew a copy of it in red chalk several copies in fact particularly to study the interplay of the Apostles and Christ's benevolent pose at the table you noticed that he's invented a canopy that's not in Leonardo a canopy behind Christ which he includes when he returns to the subject in the 1650s just as he returned to the sacrifice of Isaac at the same time the etching style is looser now more confident he lets in bright daylight from the outside at the far right here you can see leaves outside the door and he conveys the range of tones from bright light here by wide hatchings to dense dark by close tight cross hatching the symmetry here is only disturbed by the addition of the waiter who's going down to the cellar oblivious to the fact that he's got a divine guest at the table another post resurrection episode is this one where the faithful Mary Magdalene the reformed prostitute who's converted to Christ has gone to the tomb where Christ had been buried and there she found two angels who asked her why she was weeping she said they have taken away my Lord and I do not know where they have laid him she turned around and saw a man standing there whom she didn't recognize she thought he was a gardener when Brad follows a long pictorial convention of dressing Christ up as a gardener with a straw hat and carrying a shovel he asked why she was weeping and what she was looking for she told him and said if it was you who removed him tell me where he is and the man said Mary and she recognized him the passage goes on to say that Christ told her do not touch me I have not ascended to my father in heaven yet but you go to the disciples and tell them the scene is set in a really enchanting landscape with a steep hill in a cave at the right side the ground covered with leafy plants and ferns and above Christ the trees cling to a slope all painted with strokes as lively and loose as a drawing in the background across a broad valley beyond an aqueduct there rises up the Temple of Solomon on the heights with the pillars of yucca and Boas that are mentioned in the Book of Kings the picture invites you to inspect all the specifics of the place and admire its grandeur as well as appreciate the convincing performances of the actors who are playing roles in a scene that everybody in Rembrandt's time knew they also knew that their God had a habit of showing up unannounced in many different guises here's almost the same subject but not quite this is the moment later when Mary Magdalene recognizes Christ and reaches out for him only to be told not to touch him he's not yet returned to his father who had sent him to be sacrificed for Christ's returning would be a act of filial Duty different from Abraham's duty but the lesson of obedience is the same that don't touch seen on the right is much commoner than in art than the preceding recognition scene and it appears from x-rays here on the right that remember had actually began by painting a gardener the picture is very poorly preserved but you can see that its composition is far simpler than the painting of 20 years earlier on the Left we actually have some rare contemporary evidence about this painting a a poem by Rembrandt's friend Jeremiah's de Dekker in which he describes the painting and says he actually saw it being painted the poem goes it seems that Christ is saying Mary tremble not it is I death has no part of your Lord she believing this but not wholly convinced appears to vacillate between joy and grief between fear and hope your masterful strokes friend Rembrandt I first saw on this panel thus my pen was able to rhyme of your talented brush and my ink to speak of the fame of your paint I could easily imagine Decker and his painting and his painter friend discussing mary magdalene in the studio they would talk about her not being wholly convinced her hesitation in other words to take the leap of faith and accept Christ's actual presence in the flesh without needing to touch him this would be the heart of the matter for Decker and it would be for any Calvinist believer the pagan gods appeared to mortals all the time I doubt that Rembrandt had a spiritual motive for painting the princess Donna a it was probably more commercial motive but Rembrandt painted this in the same year as the Samson that you saw at the beginning the one we think constant inheritance declined to accept as a gift it's the same size very large and on cloth from the same bolt it's Rembrandt's answer to the gorgeous life-sized reclining nude Venus's of Giorgione intitial that were meant for the male gaze now in greek mythology donna a was the daughter of the king of Argos the King had a dream that one day he'd be killed by a son that Donna a would bear the prevent to prevent that from happening he locked her in a dungeon now when Greek maidens are in distress Zeus is seldom far away he he he took he took a fancy to Donna and came to her as a shower of gold the result was the birth of Perseus who sure enough accidentally killed the king it's not an it's not an important story for moral or intellectual reasons but it was a standing challenge to painters and many Italians took it up Titian gorgeo and Rembrandt's contemporary or Osseo Gentileschi there at the upper-left not surprisingly Rubens - down below all of them emphasized the shower of coins Rubens made even has a bucket to catch them in Rembrandt shows just some yellow rays of light filtering into the best bedchamber past the maid and Donna he doesn't reach for the gold she seems to signal surprise and even welcome this picture has had a terrible life especially recently 30 years ago a deranged visitor to the hermitage threw acid at it and slashed it with a knife the restoration took 12 years if you look at her legs and the white drapery at her feet you could still see the scars I would have shown you a detail but I I could not bear to do that here's how it looked before the attack in a lousy image but it gives you some idea of the damage done long before that though this canvas had already been cut down on all four sides we now know that because of pupil Verdun bull adapt adapted Rembrandt's composition for one of his own on the left substituting the agent Isaac for Donna a on the bed balls picture shows more of the room it shows a raised floor gilded supports at the left in the ornamental roof of the canopy of bed canopy and more of the table so following the clues in the bowl painting and knowing that it once had the size and proportions of the samson answers from of a turing made a digital reconstruction on the left of what Rembrandt's original composition would have looked like a lot more spacious and sumptuous Donna is another mortal who receives a sudden unexpected visit from a God in disguise who brings a blessing brings grace in the Calvinist way of thinking which is a recurring theme in Rembrandt's work I want to turn now to another theme that's related to Abraham's sacrifice and that's the trials of old men Rembrandt tweets these men with particular empathy right from the beginning of his career not just when he'd become old himself Abraham is one of those so was Jeremiah this was the prophet who warned that because of its sins Israel Israelites society would collapse and Jerusalem would be stormed by their enemies the Babylonians Jeremiah railed against corruption and depravity in Judah for forty years but like so many other moral heroes he was ignored threatened and shunned in the distance Jerusalem true to his prophecy is being destroyed it's in flames Rembrandt shows him not in theatrical remorse like Judas were in a moment of critical action like Abraham but in contemplation which seems mixed with exhaustion and despair Rembrandt uses not just as a dramatic imagination here but also his ability to create the illusion of soft mysterious light he also uses his full repertory of painters tricks to depict the details of Jeremiah's wrinkled face and hair and costume as well as the book and the vessels in front of him which were the reward he was given by the babylonians who respected him unlike his countrymen remember I only painted Jeremiah once but there were other spiritual heroes more important no none more important than the two leading Apostles Peter and Paul in the early painting on the left Rembrandt imagines both of them in one of those discussions of theological points that Paul mentions in his epistle visible through the Galatians Paul was a major preoccupation of Rembrandt's he was the model of the militant intellectual whose ideas about faith and grace were fundamental to Protestant doctrine in Rembrandt's Holland for Paul by the way Abraham's sacrifice Illustrated exactly how faith led to grace Peters life was very different he was a fisherman in the Sea of Galilee whom Christ called the rock on which I'll build my church but who failed under pressure during Christ's interrogation he repented bitterly for that afterward as he's doing in the little early painting on the Left which depicts him as the model of the repentant sinner Rembrandt made Peter the subject of one of his greatest paintings thirty years later it's based on the account in st. Luke's Gospel of what Peter did after Jesus was betrayed by Judas and seized by the temple guards then brought to the high priests house for interrogation in the courtyard the high priests men made a fire and Peter sat down with them a maid recognized Peter as one of the followers of Jesus and said to the soldiers this man was with him too Peter replied I do not know him later somebody else said you are one of them Peter said no I am NOT and after an hour someone else said of course he's with with him he's a Galilean when Peter denied it again a rooster crowed and Peter remembered that Christ had told him he would disown Christ three times before dawn the essence of Peters situation is built into the composition he stands in the middle the picture of manly strength between opposing forces on the left and you see them at the far end the left are two big soldiers in armor with brutish features who induced the fear in Peter that makes him lie and on the right side in half light you can just make out Christ very small helpless his hands bound behind his back looking at Peter loyalty to Christ should make Peter tell the truth but fear wins out the candle the main source of light here light the traditional attribute of the truth seeker Rembrandt had developed an amazing an ability over the years to picture light and not just the spectacular glow of the candle through the maids fingers but also the warm light coming up from the fire that Luke mentions out of the picture at the bottom here let's just stop a second and think what the narrative painter has to do in movie language he has to put across the sense of a scene not just with a single shot but in a single frame here Peters conflict is the heart of the scene and of the larger story to save his skin he has to betray his master that's built into the architecture of the shop just the way a movie director might frame a shot the Peter has an advantage over the filmmaker in fact he can keep near things and far things both in focus soldiers in Christ which you can't do with a camera especially in low-light time has stopped letting the audience inspect everything of leisure as the artist expected we would here's another troubled old man not lying but becoming jealous furious and violent this is King Saul who had prophetic visions but who was visited suddenly from time to time by what is called in the book of Samuel an evil spirit from God he had what we might call psychotic episodes in his a service was a young man whom he dearly loved a shepherd named David who could play the lyre and cause the evil spirit to go away David became a successful warrior which made King Saul jealous especially after David killed Goliath which some sent us all into a frenzy Rembrandt's picture shows the onset as David played Saul flung a spear at him but missed and then missed again that was the beginning of David's banishment from the Kings house and his big his period of beat living as an outlaw Rembrandt often turned to Prince as a starting point for biblical subjects and for his first attempt at this relatively rare scene it was Lucas van Leyden his Renaissance predecessor enlightened who helped him visualize the Kings body language if not that much else otherwise Rembrandt makes it much simpler composition - the stage extras and he puts the humble David a boy with a future down on the floor this painting isn't as well preserved in many places as we wish it were but it does so show so Scholes does show Saul's anger as he twists his body grips the throne and clutches what must be that shaft the twisting curtain behind him reinforces the psychology of the moment and his expression with head turn away from David signals his tormented State of Mind again Rembrandt returned to a subject he treated before and rethought it this time the result was profound he eliminated everything but the essentials the curtain was one of those essentials and not just as decor because it divides Saul angry saw from his protege soul makes an unforgettable gesture of sorrow wiping his tears with the curtain which also suggests his madness by isolating one staring eye the contrast with David is completed David is young and oblivious entirely absorbed in his music the weakness of King Saul who's elderly and afflicted is set against the strength of the humble boy who as Rembrandt's audience knew was going to replace Saul on the throne this sort of dramatic irony attracted Rembrandt and it helped him capture the sense of a story in a single image rememberin also adapts the finest or the roughness of his paint to the various jobs it's doing to describe things I mean look at how he portrays the splendor of Saul's costume which he suggests with broad strokes and then with the overlay of delicate translucent layers here and especially in the turbine on the other hand he takes pains over the structure of Saul's face his nose and his cheek and his ear some of these differences came about because as we now know he worked on the picture in two phases separated by as much as 10 years that's a peculiarities of this picture which has had an unusual time event during the past 50 years when I was a student it was one of the most admired of all Rembrandt's light paintings a little later in 1969 the influential Rembrandt scholar Horst Harrison rejected it as being internally inconsistent in style and sentimental and feeling he published it as a studio peace with suggestion that it might be a later fake or imitation and many other writers on Rembrandt came to see it that way to the Moritz harsh undertook a study and a cleaning of the pictures beginning nine years ago and the results have been pretty stunning the stylistic inconsistencies could be explained by later repaints in some areas cleaning other old cleaning off other old repaints revealed that the canvas had been cut up in the 18th or 19th century evidently to produce two single figures separately for sale but at some point later on they were stitched back together but since one part of Rembrandt's canvas had gone missing a restorer at the upper right added a piece of 17th century canvas a piece that it originally belonged to a copy of a Van Dyck portrait you can make out a little of that and then paint it over it and these seems that the last restorer used and putting the pieces together are very strange by the way they look like zippers and conservators at the Mars house still don't know what to make of them but they're now neatly concealed the evidence shows that the picture has been reduced in size owing to the trimming of the edges of the pieces when it was cut up so the original composition was wider at the left here at the bottom left see I'm going to show you yeah at the bottom is an estimate of its original extent and the black bands are what show you what's missing black bands at the bottom and the left I'm afraid I've been giving you a depressing idea today of how common it was at one time to cut and paste paintings at will to fit the decor of a room to fit a frame to make a picture to match the shape of another picture or in the case of art dealers just edit it to make it more appealing to your customers later in this series we'll see some important paintings that Rembrandt himself cut down I'm going to end with two more examples of Rembrandt's tendency as a dramatist to concentrate on just a few characters or just one and have their situation embody the story what happens in the story of Bathsheba is well known and the sensual appeal of this great nude in the Louvre is pretty obvious it's what went on in her mind at this moment that interests Rembrandt most Rembrandt Bathsheba was the wife of one of King David's commanders she was bathing near the palace when the King saw her from her is roof and had messengers go and get her she came to him and he lay with her as the Book of Kings puts it later she returned to tell him that she was pregnant nothing is said in the text about a letter that's an invention of artists it gives her an interval to consider what she should do and what the consequences will be of her doing the King's bidding her husband is off at war the King could give her a child he could make her great in the world we're back again to a subject of the artist that treated before this is a poorly preserved panel at the Met at the left painted with much help from assistance that shows an earlier moment when she's being fussed over by two maids in the right Court and in the right corner here has a peacock to signal her pride and a tower at the left where you can see King David just make it out looking down on the scene all this Rembrandt omits in the later painting instead of a lot of rich fabrics we have just one that glistening expanse of yellow brocade and we've moved closer in her pose an expression seemed to reflect thoughtful resignation perhaps with complex overtones her faint smile may be from pleasure or from pride at the Kings attention or from her rueful speculation about what's to come later in life that complexity is part of the strength of the picture combined with her gorgeously modeled body the painting has been cleaned recently the ugly yellow varnish that it had from my whole life until recently is gone so people who haven't seen this picture in the Louvre for some years have a delightful surprise waiting for them the image on the screen doesn't do it justice but it may come as a surprise to see it this way what's a surprise is the x-ray x-ray shows that Rembrandt's first idea was to have Bathsheba looking up with her head turned more towards us then he repainted the head with a downcast pose that we have now that change has her sunk in thought but her body is still turned toward us presented to us spectators she shows us what aroused the king but she conceals her innermost self from us and from him another rethink and remake this is one of the mythological scenes with small figures that Rembrandt painted in the early 1930s tonight and early 1630s a three feet wide the showing the goddess Diana's crowd of hunting nymphs taking time out at a swimming hole to the two events from Ovid's metamorphoses are occurring at the left the Hunter Oktay on comes in on the scene therefore giving diana mortal offence and at the right more interesting for us is Callisto the dark-haired girl on the ground one of Diana's supposedly chaste nymphs who's in a difficult position because sometimes earlier she had been ravished by Zeus and gotten pregnant now she's reluctant to go swimming and tries to keep her robe on as the others try to take it off this doesn't work she's found out and Diana banishes her one of Rembrandt's most breathtaking pictures is this of 20 years later picture whose subject has always been a puzzle is it simply a woman waiting in the water maybe these companion and Ricci of Stoffels you know John Racine in other words that was assumed for a long time the woman has left a gorgeous brocade robe on the bank however and it's recently been argued I think pretty convincingly that the woman is kalisto who was painted many times by other artists always with a white shift under her robe shift is a kind of attribute of kalisto she was described by Carol from under the early 17th century writer in his interpretation of the Callisto story in Ovid Callisto had been chased out of the sacred place says fan Lander with the pool of Diana whereupon she then took secret refuge in the wilderness for some time so this would be the fugitive Callisto bathing by herself there's a personal and topical connection possible here and Ricki Stoffels did somewhat resemble this figure she was pregnant in the year of the painting and she had been shamed for that in fact she was excommunicated for fornication by the Reformed Church authorities it's tempting to think that Rembrandt connected and rukia and Callisto that he saw and rukia's unjust treatment by the church as a reenactment of Callisto's at the hands of unjust gods but it's also been argued more recently that she's really Susannah bathing she's what Susannah is being looked at she's what in fact the elders the lecherous elders see not all Rembrandt problems have been solved I'm glad to tell you regardless this is one of the most wonderful and amazing feats of brushwork in the entire history of art this these broad confident strokes of white and grey are detached they're perfectly distinct but they're so right in their tonal relationships that we're convinced of the shape and the weight of the cloth even though we can see how our eye has been fooled that's a feat of visual magic that must have been admired in Rembrandt's time along with the intimate mood of the picture it's another example of Rembrandt's reducing narrative to its fewest elements he suppresses anecdotal detail he creates a minimal but evocative setting he concentrates almost entirely on the pose and the expression of the figure and he includes passages of painting like the white shift and the delicate reflections in the water includes them as gifts to the gifts to the viewer and demonstrations of his mastery both a last example of Rembrandt's ability to isolate simplify and and concentrate on the emotional part of a story this concerns Lucretia another violated woman at the end of her heroic life as told by the Roman historian Livy Lucretia was a virtuous Roman noblewoman who was tricked into submitting to rape by the son of the tyrannical Turkmen king victim though she was she wanted to spare her family members the shame that she believed would come to him them family so despite their protests she decided to take her own life as she did her family then led an uprising and the Romans put an end to the tarkman dynasty and established the Roman Republic so Lucretia was a Roman heroine but only posthumously countless artists before Rembrandt had painted this story and it shone Lucretia's curtain scene such as weed or any he uses the formula for pathos rainy does that was familiar for any number of pictures of Christian martyrs having Lucretia look up towards heaven Rembrandt also stripped the story down to its emotional climax but he makes no appeal for tears he shows only the things that tell us what just happened her bloody shift the knife and her resolute but sad expression and the things that suggest what will happen next when she pulls the cord that summons help Rembrandt shows that for now and for all time Lucretia is alone with her act and with us as witnesses well I invite you to come to the next lecture as on Rembrandt's work as a printmaker work that expanded the possibilities for etching and demonstrated his genius through all all over Europe please come back thank you

Channel: Yale University Art Gallery

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Length: 61min 11sec (3671 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 10 2016