rembrandt and the italian baroque

Rembrandt and the Italian BaroqueAuthor(s): J. BruynSource: Simiolus: Netherlands Quarterly for the History of Art, Vol. 4, No. 1 (1970), pp. 28-48Published by: Stichting voor Nederlandse Kunsthistorische PublicatiesStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3780392 .

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REMBRANDT AND THE ITALIAN BAROQUE J. BRUYN

The title of this paper can hardly be called satisfactory from the historical point of view. For Baroque, as opposed to Renaissance or to Classicism, could not possibly mean anything in the 17th century, either as a concept or as a term. According to contemporary thought the re-birth of antique art, as it had taken place in Italy, had not stopped at Raphael's death or at Michelangelo's Medici tombs - it was still in progress, though with varying success. What it had produced and was still producing meant authority and norm to every cultured mind in Western Europe at the time Rembrandt entered the scene. What picture Rembrandt had or could have of Italian art and how he interpreted it is, of course, another matter. This question I shall try to answer only to some extent: as far as Italian painting around 1600 is concerned, and only for a limited period, the formative years of the artist's career, until ca. 1636 when he was thirty years old. The first limitation may be justified by the fact that Rembrandt's relation to older Italian art has been dealt with recently by Lord Clark.' The other limitation may not be justifiable at all; it simply is a matter of necessity as I should like not only to give scattered examples of Rembrandt's knowledge and use of Italian art but also to evaluate its importance for the course of his development. My title should have run, therefore, approximately as follows: The young Rembrandt in his relation to Italian painting which could be called recent or contemporary in his time.

Rembrandt's culturalidentityisascontroversialthese days with regard to his early years as to any other period of his career. Only recently Kenneth Clark in the title of his first lecture introduced the young artist as the anti-classical Rembrandt and described him as a rebel against classical conventions. Whether one agrees or not depends largely on what these words (particularly the word anti-classical) mean or have come to mean. Concerning the notion of Rembrandt as a rebel, I suspect that nobody would have been more surprised at this description than Rembrandt himself. For, apart from the question of whether any such artistic rebellion is likely or even conceivable in the Netherlands around 1630, the evidence is hardly convincing. It consists mainly of a number of etchings and drawings of female nudes which Lord Clark qualifies as 'repulsive'(fig. 1). I am not going to contest this verdict, but I do think that it can hardly be considered a valid basis for a historical judgment, in particular for the hypothesis that Rembrandt here expressed a rebellious, anti-classical attitude. It rather seems to me that this composition and related ones must be seen in connection with, for instance, Annibale Carracci's print of 'Susanna and the Elders' (fig.2). Given the fact that Rembrandt admired Carracci's prints at an early date and that his etching technique owed much to that of Annibale, it is quite possible that the artist actually remembered this very print when he set his model, changing the position of the head as he had done on previous

* This article consists of the slightly altered text of a lecture given in various places in the Unites States and Germany in the course of 1969.

1. Kenneth Clark, Rembrandt and the Italian Renaissance, London 1966.

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Fig. I Rembrandt, A Naked Woman Seated on a Fig.2 Annibale Carracci, Susanna and the Elders Mound (etching) (etching)

occasions. The lady would seem, therefore, to be of quite impeccable classical origin, classical in the sense that Annibale's reputation at this moment of history certainly amounted to classical authority. The only reason why a discerning connoisseur like Kenneth Clark could call the outcome anti-classical is the degree of realistic veracity with which the particulars of the body, the folds of the skin and the light-effect have been rendered. This raises, first of all, the question whether our notion of what is classical is not determined to a great extent by ideas and styles which were developed only in the course of the 17th and 18th centuries, which may or may not influence our personal taste but which are irrelevant as criteria with regard to Rembrandt's work of around 1631. This etching was actually copied by Wenzel Hollar in 1635,2 not (I submit) because Hollar felt himself a co-rebel but because the print was a commercial success. I suppose that Rembrandt, far from rebelling, consciously emulated a classical prototype (Annibale's etching) as well as nature - in complete conformity with the most orthodox theoretical rules. These he interpreted, however, in a rather peculiar way by allowing naturalistic observation to play a much greater part than any Italian artist, steeped in a figurative tradition entirely unknown in the north of Europe, would have done. This brings us to another question which I can only hint at here and that is: to what extent did realism affect style, did naturalistic observation hide for us underlying principles of formal organization in Rembrandt's work or, for that matter, in the whole of Dutch 17th century painting, which seems to occupy such an exceptional and almost independent place in the European context? The only thing I want to say about this is that I believe in to be a mistake to think of realism as a style or the equivalent of a style: reality may take on artistic shape by the grace of style, not of any creative force called realism.

2. Reproduced in: S. Slive, Rembrandt and his Critics, The Hague 1953, fig. 12 and in: B. Haak, Rembrandt, zijn leven, zijn *verk, zijn tijd, Amsterdam (n.d.), fig.84.

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The idea that Rembrandt in his early work emulated and did not oppose the art of re-born Antiquity is largely hypothetical but not entirely undocumented. The earliest critical appraisal of his art is the famous, elaborate passage in the autobiographical notes of Constantijn Huygens, written around 1629/31.3 Here the poet, diplomat and virtuoso pays exuberant praise to Rembrandt and Jan Lievens, both working in Leiden at that time, both very young (23 and 22 respectively), both miraculously talented and re- sourceful. Rembrandt's work, according to Huygens, proved that a modern artist could achieve things that neither Protogenes nor Apelles or Parrhasius would have dreamt of and Huygens' praise culminates in the statement that it means less to transfer Troy to Italy than to transplant the glory of Greece an Italy to the Netherlands. If these typical- ly humanist phrases do not render actual statements of the young artists, they show the reaction of a cultivated art-lover and they no doubt reflect current ideas of what painting in its noblest form, i.e. painting of history (biblical, mythological or antique), should aim at. Consequently, Huygens could only deplore that the two young artists would not sacrifice a few months and make a trip to Italy in order to see the works of Raphael and Michelangelo whom, before long, they would surpass. Their excuse for not doing so, as Huygens reports it, was that they had a better use for their time and that the best of Italian painting was to be seen in the collections of kings and princes outside Italy. There may have been some justification for this exaggerated statement in the recent news of the purchase of the Gonzaga collection by Charles I. But a source of more immediate knowledge of Italian art must have consisted in prints. The very earliest painting by Rembrandt we now have, the 'Stoning of St. Stephen' of 1625 in Lyon, actually contains a quotation from an engraving after Raphael.4 It was a different picture, however, that especially attracted Huygens' attention: the 'Judas Retuming the Pieces of Silver' of 1629, since 1939 known to be in the collection of the Marquess of Normanby and previously known only through a considerable number of painted copies which testify to the picture's success (fig.3).i Huygens' eulogy concentrates entirely on the figure of the repentant Judas: his gestures, his attitude, his face, his dress, which all express his despair and his remorse. It is easy to recognize in this comment the old tenet of Italian Renaissance art theory which was particularly topical around 1600 and which required the clear expression of emotions or affetti. This idea obviously determined Huygens' reaction as well as his wording when he called vivacity of the rendering of emotions one of Rembrandt's main assets. This evaluation apparently corresponded first of all with general opinion as it was reflected in Jan Joris van Vliet's etching of precisely this figure of Judas, but probably also with the artists own intention. For him the

3. The Latin manuscript published by J.A. Worp in: Bi/dragen en Mededeelingen van het Historisch Genootschap XVIII (1897), 1-121. The fragment concerning contemporary artists with a Dutch translation by the same in: Oud-Holland 1891, 106-136, 307-308. An improved Dutch translation was given by A.H. Kan, De jeugd van Constantijn Huygens door hemzelf beschreven, Rotterdarn- Antwerpen 1946. The Latin text of the passage concerning Rembrandt and Lievens was reproduced in K. Bauch, Der fnrhe Rembrandt und seine Zeit, Berlin 1960, 269-270, where, however, a whole paragraph has been omitted. A thorough interpretation of this important text is long overdue. 4. A. Bredius, revised by Hi. (,erson, Rembrandt. The Complete E'dition of the Paintings, London 1969, 531A. Cf. the print of 'David Slaying Goliath' attributed to Marcaritonio Rainiondi (Bartsci 10), reproduced in: 11. Delaborde, Marc-Antoine Raimondi, llaris (n.d.), 279. 5. C.H. Collins Baker, 'Rembrandt's Thirty l'ieces of Silver', The Burlington Alagzinie 1 939, 179-1 80.

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-o -- -------------

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~... .. t ^...

Fig.3 Rembrandt, Judas Returning the Pieces od Silver (1629) The Marquess of Normanby

rendering of Judas' emotional state of mind probably was the real purpose of the picture. This seems the only possible explanation for the choice of a subject for which practically no iconographical tradition existed. Rembrandt would seem to have taken a more or less current formula for repentance - such as the repentant Magdalen in a 'Piet'a' by Annibale Carracci6 - and built his composition around it. How successful this composition is seems more debatable than Huygens' comment would suggest. On the one hand, the colouring shows the young artist as the innovator he_was; instead of the over-all gaiety of the works of an older generation, particularly of his most influential teacher Pieter Lastman, we find here the controlled balance of bright yellow and grey and more subdued shades, such as orange brown and dark violet. But, on the other hand, the pyramidal grouping of the fi'gures does little to stress the relationship between the protagonists, nor do the rather confused construction of the architectural background and the arbitrary light-effect clarify the dramatic situation. A homogeneous conception of the drama in terms of figure composition and related space and lighting is clearly lacking. Huygens, who after all was more of a theoretician than of a connoisseur, may not have noticed this; Rembrandt himself seems to have been acutely aware of it. His works of the early '30's clearly show his attempts at a stronger unifi'cation of his

6. Parma, Galleria Nazionale. Painted around 1585. Catalogue Mostra dei Carracci, Bologna 1956, nr. 60 (reproduced).

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D~~~A 4e lA

... ; 6w 2 E | I l | I |~~~~~~..... ----s.-

Fig.4 Rembrandt, Jeremiah Lamenting the Des- truction of Jerusalem (1630) Fig.S Pieter Lastman, St. Luke

Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum Dijon, Mus&e Magnin

pictorial means and his dramatic and expressive intentions, and it is during this stage that he must have looked intently at what specimens of early Baroque imagery were available to him.

As an example of Rembrandt's growth towards that stronger organization and unifi- cation that we now call Baroque, we may consider the picture of 1630, now in Amster- dam, that we still call by the title which Wilhelm von Bode gave it: 'Jeremiah Lamenting the Destruction of Jerusalem'(fig.4)- a title which does not correspond with any episode from the Bible but which may be correct after all.7 The burning city with soldiers and a fleeing figure is most probably Jerusalem and this motif already occurs, together with the prophet Jeremiah who supports his head on one hand in a gesture of grief, in mediaeval manuscript illumination.8 In all probability Rembrandt consciously used this

7. During the 19th century this picture was known as 'Loth in a Cave' or 'Anchises in a Cave' (J. Smith, A Catalogue Raisonne...VII, London 1836, nrs. 9 and 190) or as 'Le philosophe dans une grotte' (C. Vosmaer, Rembrandt Harmens van Rijn, La Haye 1868, 2-3). The present title was introduced by W. Bode, Rembrandt I, Paris 1897, nr. 39. Recently some doubt was expressed by J.G. van Gelder in: Open baar Kunstbezit 1963, nr. 15. 8. Cf. e.g. an illustration in the Stavelot Bible (British Museum, Add. 28106, fol. 163v), referred to by C.M. Kauffmann in: Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 1966, 70. The Speculum humanae salvationis mentions Jeremiah lamenting Jerusalem as a prefiguration of Christ entering Jerusalem (chapter XV) and the illustrations show Jeremiah either standing on a crenelated tower or wall or sitting on a hill outside a city (J. Lutz & P. Perdrizet, Speculum humanae salvationis, Mulhouse 1907-1909, 32, pls. 29, 105, 13 1; E. Breitenbach, Speculum humanae salvationis, Strassburg 1930, 162-163). The importance of the Speculum for religious iconography in 17th century Holland deserves further investigation.

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{' l ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~A

Fig. 7 Paolo Veronese, The Apostles Philip and Fig. 6 Guido Reni, The Apostles Peter en Paul James the Less

Milan, Brera Dublin, National Gallery of Ireland

traditional gesture whfich had become fashionable as a distinctive of the melancholic temperament to express the old man's grief. It is interesting to note that in a chalk drawing of the same model, dating from the next year and now in Teyler's Foundation, Haarlem (Benesch 40), he used another age-old gesture (the right hand grasping the left wrist) for the same purpose, 9 without using this motif in any greater composition that has come down to us. However, the remarkable thing about the Amsterdam 'Jeremiah' is not so much the fact that Rembrandt used a traditional expressive formula as the way he incorporated it into his composition. Restricting himself to what actually is a one filgure composition, the artist here achieved a perfect unity by using a diagonal from bottom left to top right as the axis of the scene: a diagonal which separates the framed vista on the left and the bulky stfi-life on the right, but which, at the samne time, describes a slightly curved diagonal into space, receding from the left bottom corner to the vaguely indicated column to the right in the background. The prophet's tilted head, supported by h-is left arm, forms part of this diagonal in its planimetric as well as in its spatial sense, thus achieving a perfect equipoise between the painting's formal construction and its emotional meaning. In order to appreciate the novelty of this unity of surface pattern and spatial conception and of form and subject-matter, we may turn to a comparable subject treated by Rembrandt's teacher Lastman, the undated 'St. Luke' in

9. See: E. Herzog, 'Zur Kirchenmadonna Van Eycks', Berliner Museen VI (1956-57), 2-16 with further references (2 note 3).

33



the Musee Magnin at Dijon (fig.5). For all its engaging qualities, this picture shows the style of an older generation. There is an indication of a diagonal, this time from bottom right to top left, but it has no spatial value, it does not determine the division between solid masses and receding space and its direction is counteracted by a number of important elements, notably by the evangelist's fore-arms, which run parallel but in opposite directions, and by his head, which ignores the diagonal altogether. On the whole, a vigorous surface pattern, full of wayward twirls in the heavy, yet seemingly weightless, drapery, seems to have been the artist's main concern. Even when the young Rembrandt was impressed by this style, as in the Stuttgart 'St. Paul' of 1627, he dissociated himself from it, not only by toning down his colours and by introducing a greater intensity of observation and refinement of texture, but also by an attempt at stronger compositional unity. In this respect the 'Jeremiah' of 1630 signifies an important achievement and there can be little doubt that Rembrandt learnt a lesson from Italian art. Quite apart from the question of which particular prototype Rembrandt may have had in mind, it can be said that the use of the human figure as a spatial diagonal, especially in a corner of a greater composition, was an Italian and, more specifically, a Venetian invention of the later 16th century, which was exploited by the Carracci and their followers in Bologna and Rome around the turn of the century. Although Rembrandt applied the motif to a single figure, thereby increasing its spatial effectiveness, the assumption that the idea came to him from an Italian source can hardly be avoided. It has been suggested by Van Rijckevorsel,10 that Rembrandt may have based his 'Jeremiah' on the figure of St. Peter in an early work by Guido Reni, 'The Apostles Peter and Paul' of ca. 1605, now in the Brera, Milan (fig.6). The hypothesis is attractive because we should like to imagine that Reni's characterization of the two apostles as the melancholic and the sanguinic must have appealed to Rembrandt. It is also plausible because this very composition appears to have been known in Rembrandt's workshop at an early date when Jacob Backer based one of his earliest paintings on it.' l Until a better solution turns up (which would, I am sure, point to a similar origin) we are therefore justified in assuming that Rembrandt knew Reni's composition, even if we don 't know of any early reproduction or copy that would fully explain this. As we shall see, in cases where we do know of such intermediary sources our knowledge sometimes is a matter of sheer chance and our ignorance of them should not prevent us from making conjectures of this kind. It may be added, that Reni's representation in its turn is clearly based on Venetian ideas which may have been current in the Carracci workshop in Bologna. The painting of 'The Apostles and James the Less' by Paolo Veronese, now in the Dublin museum (fig.7), furnishes an example. Here, evidently, is the origin of the idea to portray one apostle seated, the other standing, though in a more dynamic and (to put it in 20th century terms) less psycholo- gically differentiated manner. The fact that an early Baroque conception which Rembrandt selected for emulation tums out to have earlier Venetian antecedents is not without a significance, as we shall see.

10. J.L.A.A. van Rijckevorsel, Rembrandt en de traditie, Rotterdam 1932, 80. 1 1. K. Bauch, Jacob Adriaensz Backer, Berlin 1926, nr. 57, pl. 1 1.

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Before turning to another phase in Rembrandt's development, I should like to stress that, of course, Rembrandt was not the only Dutch artist who knew Italian motifs and made use of them. His orientation towards Italian art may, actually, have been due to the teaching of Pieter Lastman, who occasionally reverted to Italian prototypes and used them in his own way. An illustration of this is offered by a motif from another work by Paolo Veronese, painted around 1566 for the church of S. Giorgio in Braida in Verona and now in the museum at Rouen. 12 It represents 'St.Barnabas Healing a Sick Man' by touching his head with the Gospel. The central group of the saint and the youth, whose sharply foreshortened body points into depth, is framed by a number of actors and spectators who with their bent heads and bodies are instrumental in clarifying the spatial context. An anonymous etching (fig.8) may have divulged this composition across the Alps and the figure of the reclining youth impressed Lastman so much that he repeated it time and again in various compositions and with widely divergent meanings. Together with a caravaggiesque angel and a rather clumsy Abraham he acts as the young Isaac who is about to be sacrificed (fig.9).'13 But he may also be dressed as a woman and enact the part of Rachel who hides the teraphim from her furious father Laban.'4 The same woman appears amongst the crowd who is listening to St. John the Baptist preaching.' l The inference is that Lastman considered Veronese's reclining youth primarily as a successful specimen of foreshortening and that the compositional function and the dramatic meaning of the motif did not mean much to him. Rembrandt, on the other hand, fully grasped the formal qualities of his prototypes and more often than not reinforced their stylistic significance in his own way, as he did in the 'Jeremiah'. This is true even in those cases where he made use of literal quotations, as he sometimes did. In general, however, the freedom with which he handled a motif or a compositional idea which had struck his fancy explains our difficulty in identifying his visual prototype.

The large 'Holy Family' in Munich (fig.10), painted some three years after the 'Jeremiah', is a case in point.' 6 Compared to the earlier and much smaller picture, the composition has become more complicated, the two main actors describing a spatial pattern that consists of two diagonal curves which cross each other at a right angle. Although the figure of St. Joseph might have been taken from the stock-in-trade of Veronese or even Tintoretto and the Virgin shows, besides the features of Saskia, something of Parmigianino's linea serpentinata, the ambitious scheme is characteristic of the artist's leaning towards an early Baroque style. Perhaps for this very reason, the painting has not been popular in the Rembrandt literature 17 and it is true that it represents one

12. Catalogue Le XVIe Sie'cle Europeen. Peintures et Dessins dans les Collections Publiques Fran- paises, Paris 1965-66, nr. 312 with reproduction and bibliography. 13. Paris, Louvre. Dated 1616. K. Freise, Pieter Lastman, Leipzig 1911, nr. 11. The similarity of a picture of the same subject by Johann Liss in the Uffizi, Florence, can hardly be accidental. 14. Boulogne-sur-Mer. Dated 1622. Freise, o.c. nr. 17. 15. Present whereabouts unknown. Dated 1627. Freise, o.c. nr. 48. 16. As stated by Bredius-Gerson, o.c. 544, and by Haak, o.c. 88, the last digit of the date 1631, which the painting bears, was painted on an added strip. The signature Rembrandt f is incompatible with that date anyway. Gerson dated the picture around 1635, Haak. more correctly in my opinion, around 1633. 17. Cf. e.g. C. Neumann, Rembrandt, Munchen 19223, 53: 'etwas zu grosz freilich und leer, aber als intime Familienszene im Ausdruck unubertrefflich...'; W. Weisbach, Rembrandt, Berlin-Leipzig 1926, 154: '...mit ihrem groszem Format kein sehr gegluckter Versuch...'

35



Al.~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Fig.8 After Paolo Veronese, St. Barnabas Hea- K;

| t

~~~~~~ling a Sick Man (anonymous etching, sometimes attr. to Mattioli)

_ Fig. 9 Pieter Lastman, The Sacrifice of Abraham ->S : - (1616) Paris, Louvre

aspect only of Rembrandt's style of the early '30's. Simultaneously, the fascination with a vast void where the human figures are submerged in light and shade remains a creative force. The 'Presentation' of 1631 in The Hague is an impressive example of this aspect of Rembrandt's art, which has more to do with Elsheimer than with Reni or Caravaggio, more with the magic of colour and tone values than with the conception of human figures as active forces in a spatially and dramatically meaningful relationship. From this latter point of view, however, the Munich 'Holy Family' means an important and, seen in the Dutch context of the early '30's, daring achievement. It is only logical that one looks for foreign influence and one has sometimes thought of Rubens as its source.1 8 This is hardly probable, were it only for the fact that in Rubens' work continuity of rhythm plays a greater part than spatially contrasting forces. On the whole, I feel that Rembrandt has profited remarkably little from Rubens' inventions, a fact which it is easier to ascertain than to explain. In this case, there is one curious indication that Rembrandt actually assimilated Italian ideas. The gesture of the Virgin's right arm, besides being compositionally important, corresponds with a motif from Byzantine icons of the Hypsilotera type in that she holds the Christ child's feet.'9 This motif found its way into Italian painting. It was used, for instance, by Coppo di Marcovaldo and Cimabue and became particularly popular in Siena. It was revived in Parma and Venice in the 16th century when Correggio, Titian and Bassano gave the old gesture a

18. Cf. e.g. Van Rijckevorsel, o.c. 87-91; J. Rosenberg, Rembrandt, London 19642, 196. 19. 'H v5cpnXoiipa rwUv oGpcwavw: She who is elevated above heaven. Cf. W. Felicetti-Liebenfels, Geschichte der byzantinischen Ikonenmalerei, Olten-Lausanne 1956, 27, 59, 92.

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Fig. 10 Rembrandt, The Holy Family Munich, Alte Pinakothek

Fig. 11 Camille Procaccini, The Rest on the Flight into Egypt (etching)

eS.. f......

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 4 j

37



Fig. 12 Rembrandt, The Sacrifice of Abraham Fig. 13 Peter Lastman, The Sacrifice of Abraham (1635) Leningrad, Ermitage Amsterdam, Rembrandthuis

new amplitude.20 From this it would appear that Rembrandt had some North-Italian version in mind and a drawing by Cambiaso, now in Florence, actually contains most of the ingredients for his composition. Very similar, and still closer to Rembrandt's picture as far as the figure of the Virgin is concemed, is an etching of Camillo Procaccini (Bartsch 1)(fig. 11) which may have come to Rembrandt's knowledge as easily as some painting in the possession of Hendrik Uylenburgh, the Amsterdam art-dealer in whose house he lived for some time. Neither of these Italian specimens, however, shows the interweaving of contrasting movements which is so characteristic of Rembrandt's composition and which, together with the strong chiaroscuro, is responsible for its Baroque character. Did Rembrandt, with the eye of a Dutch Guercino, reinterpret and modernize his Italian prototypes? This is conceivable but a glance at the charming etching of the same subject which just antedates the Munich painting (Bartsch 62) may make us feel rather doubtful. Although the reading Joseph in the background was borrowed straight from an etching by Annibale Carracci, the composition is much less sophisticated here then in the painting and makes us think that the surprisingly modern solution for the spatial relationship between Joseph and the Virgin used in the Munich picture may have been suggested to Rembrandt by some North-Italian source not yet identified.

20. Cf. e.g. Correggio's 'Rest on the Flightinto Egypt' in Naples ('La Zingarella'), Titian's 'Madonna and Child' in Munich and Bassano's early 'Flight into Egypt' at Bassano.

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Fig. 14 Caravaggio, St. Mattew ..;4 r v fi ll ll i 5 _ Rome, S. Luigi dei Francesi

Fig.15 Attr. to Jacopo Bassano, St. John the =>

w ^ F B_wS

Evangelist Venice, Palazzo Ducale

In the following years similar problems concerning the spatial relationship between figures in contrasting attitudes or actions occupied Rembrandt's mind a great deal, particularly when he designed large-scale compositions. The 'Sacrifice of Abraham' in Leningrad (fig. 12) bears the date 1635; Rembrandt was not yet thirty when he painted it and it is amazing how much his brush-work had gained in freedom and vitality, how rich it had become in the suggestion of luminous masses. This painting is usually spoken of with an undertone of disapproval. The cruelty of Abraham's treatment of his son and the triviality of the falling knife had to be exused as youthful sins against good taste. But that kind of good taste has, of course, nothing to do with the taste prevailing in the 1630's and Carl Neumann rightly cited the horrors shown on the stage, culminating in plays by Jan Vos, to illustrate the mentality of the period.21 There is nothing surprising or even personal about Rembrandt's aesthetics in this respect, nothing that could not be found wherever aesthetics were still in a pre-classicistic phase. His main preoccupation must have been with the arrangement of his three figures on a monumental scale in such a way that the two-fold conflict of this dramatic moment would find full expression: Isaac's submission to Abraham and the interruption by the angel. The reclining Isaac and the angel act as contrasting spatial diagonals which are linked by the curve of Abraham's

21. Neumann, o.c. 117.

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extended arms which, in its turn, crosses the curve of the patriarch's body. As in the 'Jeremiah', the still-life and other massive forms on the right contrast to the vista on the left. As in the 'Holy Family', diagonal movements meet and cross in space, reinforced here by the action of four sharply lighted hands, which mark foci of spatial as well as emotional sinificance. One can, I think, interpret 'Abraham's sacrifice', therefore, first of all as a further step in a consistent stylistic development, which may be called a personal variant of the early Baroque style. Otto Benesch spoke of the 'Caravaggiesque plenitude' of this very composition,22 and there is some evidence to substantiate this statement. There is little doubt that Rembrandt knew Lastman's grisaille, now in the Rembrandt-House, Amsterdam (fig.13). The comparison demonstrates at once how thoroughly Rembrandt reinterpreted his prototype. The wonderful coherence of his forms is entirely of his own making and so is the spatial effect. Although the similarity between the two pictures is, therefore, rather superficial, the most successful part of Lastman's grisaille, the upper portion with the angel and Abraham turning his head towards him, must have impressed Rembrandt. It is here that Caravaggio comes in. For it is quite obvious that Lastman based precisely this upper portion on what he had seen in the Contarelli Chapel of S. Luigi dei Francesi during his Roman years, particularly on Caravaggio's altar-piece where St. Matthew's angel appears in a rather unusual way to inspire the evangelist (fig.14). So completely does the upper half of Lastman's 'Abraham' agree with Caravaggio's composition reversed, that one feels tempted to think that the latter was based in reality on a traditional type of Abraham's sacrifice. This idea appears to be futile as there are Venetian antecedents for evangelists being addressed by intruding angels. A picture from the Bassano workshop in the Palazzo Ducale (fig.15) offers an example, and it is quite possible that Caravaggio remembered this or a similar composition when, after the refusal of his first altar-piece, he had to paint a second one, and that he translated it into his own veristic idiom with strong Michelangelo remini- scenses. In our context it is worth noticing that, if Rembrandt's source twice removed was a Roman work by Caravaggio, the ultimate source for his dramatic conception of space was to all appearances again the Venetian Cinquecento. It may be taken as proof of his greatness that he could read so much into so little as Lastman's grisaille could offer him. On the other hand, it is symptomatic of the persistance with which he studied formal problems that his first solution left him no peace. The figure of the angel in particular seems to have dissatisfied him, possibly as being too tame. In the next year, 1636, another version, now in Munich, was completed. Whether this is a studio-piece, retouched by Rembrandt (as has been assumed till recently) or an autograph variant (as there is good reason to believe),23 it is quite clear that the change in composition is Rembrandt's and that the reinforcement of the dramatic effect shows the working of his mind.

The year 1636 has been generally recognized as a climax in Rembrandt's pursuit of drama in terms of conflicting physical action. The 'Blinding of Samson', now in Frank-

22. 0. Benesch, The Drawings of Rembrandt I, London 1954, 27 nr.90. 23. This possiblity has been proposed by B. Haak, o.c. 126-127. The authenticity of the chalk drawing in the British Museum which is connected with the Munich version (Benesch nr. 90) has been doubted by E. Haverkamp Begemann in: Kunstchronik 1961, 22. These doubts seem to be reinforced by the analysis of the composition which is given herc.

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Fig. 16 Rembrandt, The Blinding of Samson (1636) Frankfort, Stadelsches Kunstinstitut

furt (fig. 16), is known as an extreme case, and rightly so. Especially when one omits the awkward later additions to the original canvas the picture is a worthy counterpart of a great many scenes of saintly martyrdom in Italy or the Southern Netherlands. It is not fortuitous that this painting too has been criticized as not fitting into the picture of Rembrandt as a Protestant humanitarian. It has been rightly pointed out that in this case Rembrandt actually made use of an authentic scene of martyrdom, however indirect his knowledge of it may have been.24 This is, of course, Caravaggio's 'Martyrdom of St. Matthew' in the same chapel as the St. Matthew altar-piece and it may again have been Lastman who transmitted some idea of the composition. Whereas the episode of Delilah cutting Samson's hair was a current theme in 16th and 17th century art, the next moment, the blinding of Samson, was a most unusual one and it may well be that some echo of Caravaggio's scene prompted Rembrandt to choose this theme of violence from a story that, as a matter of fact, occupied his mind a great deal during these years. No Dutch painter of the period would have been capable of translating this dramatic moment into one coherent scene of contrasting actions. The diagonal described by the helpless hero has become the axis of the whole composition, reinforced by the trium- phant Delilah who runs towards the light and who fulfils a similar centrifugal function as the shrieking boy in Caravaggio's composition. The impetus towards the left became so

24. W. Stechow in: The Art Bulletin 1950, 255.

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strong that Rembrandt must have felt the need to balance it with a strong counter- movement, very different from the equivalence of the two antithetic corner figures at the base of Caravaggio's mural. At this point Rembrandt remembered the 'Boar hunt' (Bartsch 1146), one of the many prints by Antonio Tempesta which, according to the inventory of his collection, he possessed.25 Tempesta strikes us as a facile illustrator, working in the Florentine tradition of the later 16th century, rather than as a great artist. But the facility he possessed must have looked like the perfect command of the Italian grand manner to most Northerners. Rembrandt's appreciation of Tempesta's etchings should be viewed in this light and one cannot reproach him for superficial borrowing. On the contrary, he appears to have read far more dramatic meaning into Tempesta's boar hunter than this innocent figure would seem to justify. Although the success of its colossal enlargement seems questionable, it certainly is symptomatic of Rembrandt's ambition to develop a caravaggiesque composition scheme further in the sense of a unified structure of conflicting spatial diagonals. It is worth recalling that this tendency, as far as it was implied already in Caravaggio's 'Martyrdom', again was of Venetian origin: one of Titian's most famous masterpieces, the now lost 'Assassination of St. Peter Martyr', obviously served Caravaggio as a starting-point. Again, it seems probable and significant that Rembrandt selected from a recent Roman work of art just those aspects which were based on earlier Venetian conceptions without having any direct knowledge of Titian's altar-piece, of which no early reproductions seem to have existed.

The 'Blinding of Samson' has been identified hypothetically with a big canvas (ten feet long and eight feet high) which Rembrandt presented to Huygens in 1639. We know this only from two of the letters by Rembrandt that have come down to us, all of them addressed to Huygens.26 Whether or not that painting, which according to the artist's advice should be hung in a strong light and should be visible at some distance, actually was the 'Samson' we don't hear anything more of the bulky present. Given the number of poems Huygens made on painting during his long life, this seems a bad sign. Are we to assume that the course of Rembrandt's development did not answer his earlier expecta- tions? We don't know, and still less can we guess what may have been the reason for such a dissatisfaction. But if such reasons existed, they probably were very different from the view of modern critics who felt that Rembrandt's contact with international Baroque trends resulted in works that, because of their theatrical vehemence, were hardly worthy of the artist and that this phase of his development was a deplorable lapse. The question arises, then, of whether the examples we have cited represent a consistent evolution of his style that must be considered essential for his development, or a passing fashion to which the artist succumbed in moments of weakness. As I mentioned earlier, there were other formal principles which interested Rembrandt in the 1630's besides the preoccupation with large-scale figures in contrasting movements. In a way, the rendering of vast, mysteriously lighted interiors or landscapes, populated with small or even tiny flgures, is more closely linked with indigenous traditions, enriched

25. As pointed out by Van Rijckevorsel, o.c. 126-129. 26. H. Gerson, Seven letters by Rembrandt, The Hague 1961, 34, 50, 53(letters of January 12th and 27th, 1639).

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Fig. 17 Jan Miense Molenaer, Scene from Lucelle (1636) Muiden, Muidersiot

Fig. 18 Quinten Massys, Lamentation Antwerp, Museum voor Schone Kunsten

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with Elsheimer's new inventions. But I am convinced that the artist's monumental ambitions and his awareness of the achievements of recent Italian art have played an essential part in his later development. In order to evaluate the importance of this aspect of Rembrandt's art one has to realize the curious state of affairs with regard to history painting in the Northern Netherlands at this moment.

Precisely in the year 1636 Rembrandt's contemporary Jan Miense Molenaer moved from Haarlem to Amsterdam and painted an episode from Lucelle, a play by the Amsterdam poet Bredero.2 7 Two young lovers are believed to have poisoned themselves and her parents, his rival and others find the bodies (fig.17). Here we have, therefore, a theatrical scene in the proper sense but it is amazing how little theatrical it is. The grouping is that of a somewhat confused group portrait and has no dramatic meaning whatsoever, nor has the setting; the gestures are lame and unrelated to each other. There is a sort of naiVe charm about the picture but the artist seems to have deliberately avoided any reference to antique or Italian motifs, composition schemes or gestures. It is hard indeed to imagine that one generation earlier Haarlem had been a cross-road where international trends met and were digested in a cosmopolitan art production, based on the formal and intellectual ideals of Renaissance and humanism that dominated the whole of Europe during the 16th century. Rather than following this pattern an artist like Molenaer seems to have turned to early Netherlandish painting, not only in his meticulous technique and highly finished treatment but also in his even distribution of figures whose ideographic rather than dramatic meaning makes them comparable to those in a 'Lamentation' by Quinten Massys (fig.18) rather than to any Baroque work of art. This attitude may have had something to do with a nationalist and puritan tendency which is unmistakable in the first decades of the young Dutch Republic and one may call it reactionary, seen in the European artistic context of the period. It resulted here in a curiously trivial style which, inevitably, lacked the solemn stylization of late-Gothic painting as well as its religious motivation. On the other hand, this loving realism could be highly meaningful and convey a wealth of more or less 'concealed' symbolism, just as late-mediaeval art had done. This archaizing tendency bore rich fruit, especially in still-life and interior painting where there existed ample opportunity to include a pious or moral meaning by means of old and new symbols. With regard to history painting, however, the result was generally disastrous. And how could it have been otherwise? The dramatic conception as such was foreign to the mediaeval tradition; it was introduced into Dutch literature by poets who consciously took antique and Italian works as their models and this happened at a rather late moment, actually precisely at the moment when the greater part of the younger generation of artists, born around 1600, turned away from dramatic narrative and designed their realistic world-image, static as a reflection of symbolic and exemplary values. In which other country would either patron or artist have fallen upon the idea to represent 'Diogenes in search of a man' in the guise of a family group on the Haarlem market place? Yet, this is what Caesar van Everdingen did in 1652 (fig.19) and, absurd though it may seem, the idea is entirely in keeping with the tradition of the late-mediaeval exetnplzun?7 as we know it, for instance, from the scenes of Justice which Gerard David painted for the Bruges Town Hall in

27. Catalogue G.A. Brederode, Amsterdam 1968, nr. 109.

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1498. Here too an antique story had been rendered as a contemporary event or, rather, as a moral lesson in contemporary dress, portait heads included.

This conception, this moralizing self-projection and the seemingly art-less realism resulting from it, was, however, not the only one in Holland during the 17th century, though probably the most popular one. The intellectual tradition of the 16th century and its awareness of the essentially neo-Platonic Renaissance conception of the artist as a creator of beauty lived on, especially among lettered people like Constantijn Huygens. For them contact with Italian thought and Italian art was essential and a number of artists, most of them Roman-Catholics, kept looking and also travelling South. Lastman and a small group of artists, all born in the 1580's, took home a mixture of lyrical landscape conceptions taken from Elsheimer and some notions of dramatic figure composition from Venice and from Caravaggio's Rome; the result, as we have seen, was a lively yet contrived rather than coherent narrative style with a characteristic preference for realistic accessories. Very different was the effect of Italian painting on a slightly younger group of artists, born in the 1590's, who were impressed exclusively by Caravaggio's figure style and his dramatic chiaroscuro. Besides the well-known Utrecht Caravaggists, this group comprised Jacob van Campen, better known for his introduction of classical architecture in Holland. His Diogenes of 1628 (fig.20) may be contrasted with the corresponding scene which Caesar van Everdingen painted 24 years later (fig. 19). The comparison makes it clear that Van Campen, who incidentally belonged to the intellectual circle around Huygens, considered the antique anecdote not, or not explicitly, as an occasion for moralizing reflection but as a historical subject with an emotional and dramatic meaning of its own. In thebackground, fragments of antique buildings denote the historical context and the strong side-light stresses the contrasting affetti which determine the dramatic situation and the artistic meaning of the scene.

Rembrandt and Lievens belonged to the few Dutch artists born in the first decade of the 17th century who decided to be primarily painters of history. This decision must be called traditional rather than revolutionary; yet, at this moment, it was he exception rather than the rule. There is, actually, one surprising element in their attitude: their refusal to study Italian art in Italy, which is all the more remarkable as their statement that Italian art could be seen quite well outside Italy implies that they fully recognized its importance. Why, then, did they not follow the usual pattern and make the Italiantrip as their common teacher Lastman had done? It seems possible that their reluctance had something to do with a nationalist, possibly anti-Roman Catholic attitude. Rembrandt certainly admired works of older Dutch artists, particularly Lucas van Leyden and Maerten van Heemskerck, as is noticeable in works from every period of his career. Yet he must have been keenly aware of the fact that a homogeneous narrative, in which one dramatic intention determined all formal elements of composition, colour, light, facial expression and setting, could only be achieved on the basis of the principles of re-born Antiquity as the Italians practised them.

Far from being a passing flirtation with an objectionable fashion Rembrandt's relationship with the Italian Baroque, as I see it, may be considered essential for his stylistic development as we have observed it in works from around 1630 till 1636. The main (although not the only) problem that occupied his mind during these years hiow to arrange large-scale figures in space in a dramatically meaninigful way was a basic pro-

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blem of early Baroque art and but for his intensive study of Italian painting and prints he would not have been able to explore the matter as thoroughly as he did. What remains to be explained is the question of why, in Rembrandt's case, contacts with Italian art led to results so fundamentally different from the works of Lastman and his group as well as of the Caravaggists. For it is the paradoxical truth that these older artists, after having studied Italian art on the spot, produced works that may be considered provincial derivatives, whereas Rembrandt, without making the Italian study trip, grasped the stylistic meaning of Baroque art to such an extent that his works impress us as autonomous creations. One tentative explanation is, of course, that amongst Rembrandt's personal gifts there must have been an exceptional perspicacity which enabled him to discern in works of art he admired just those stylistic qualities which answered his own intentions, without necessarily imitating particular features, motifs or techniques.

From this point of view, Rembrandt's fragmentary and largely indirect knowledge of Italian painting may have been a blessing in disguise in as far as the temptation to surrender either to Caravaggio or to another great Italian artist did not present itself to him. Maybe his many-sidedness would have protected him from that danger anyway. For ambitious historical compositions were only part of his enormous output which included such entirely different subjects as scribbles of unpretentious scenes from every- day life. But then it should be remembered that nothing is as strongly conditioned by pre- conceived ideas as the observation of the ordinary;and many of these spontaneous sketches of women and children may turn out to be unintentional variantsof Raphael Madonnas or, in the case of a detail of a drawing in the Louvre (Benesch 112) showing a child with a bowl, of the corresponding motif in the group of beggars and children in Annibale Carracci's 'St. Roch Distributing Alms', which Rembrandt may have known through Guido Reni's etching. A prototype such as this reminds us of the fact that Rembrandt was deeply interested in Italian figure composition but that classical architecture, which according to Italian theory and practice was an essential part of a decorous setting, seems to have left him completely indifferent. For this later critics took him to task and it may actually have offended Huygens, who was something of an architect himself, in 1639 when he was presented with the 'Blinding of Samson'. Rembrandt's neglect of architectural decorum alone would suffice to prove that his attitude towards Italian art was not based on any theoreticalconsiderationsbut sprang from an artistic need.

Our last and perhaps most delicate question should be whether Rembrandt's relation with Italian Baroque art, which lost much of its itensity after 1636, must be considered a short-lived tendency without a lasting meaning for his later development or a prere- quisite for that development. The answer inevitably will be a matter of opinion rather than of demonstrability. It is true that Rembrandt's later style is marked by a static harmony of parallel planes rather than by the conflict of diagonals, and that, in a sense, it is more closely related in colour and brushwork to Titian and the Venetian Cinquecento than to the early Baroque. Yet, I feel that the spacing of his figures, which contributes so much to the emotional meaning of a picture like 'Jacob Blessing the Sons of Joseph' of 1656 in Kassel, would have been inconceivable but for his intimate knowledge of the Baroque idiom. The key has changed and so has the compositional rhythm. But the equipoise between spatial organization and emotional content has

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remained essentially the same and even become more subtle. This was the lesson which Rembrandt had found in Italian Baroque art and which remained valid in the context of a less turbulent, more introvert style. It seems relevant to remember, at this point, that just those elements of Baroque art which aroused his admiration can be traced back to Venetian conceptions of space as a powerful medium in the dramatic context. It is perhaps not entirely illogical, therefore, to stress the continuity in Rembrandt's dramatic language, notwithstanding the change in style, and to assume that when his art entered a more classical phase (which presents some analogy but not the slightest similarity to Roman classicism) the shifting of his sympathies from the Baroque to the Venetian Cinquecento meant not so much a break as a continuation of the search for the same values in a simpler and purer form.

Rembrandt's knowledge of Italian art must have been vast and his understanding of it deeper than that of most of his contemporaties, even those who travelled South (Rubens, of course, excepted). But at the same time his selection was constantly determined by a strong autonomous will. These capacities may help to explain his unique position in the history of Dutch 17th century painting.

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rembrandt and the italian baroque

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