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N6 Sunday, December 10, 2006

SUNARTS 12-10-06 EZ EE N6

ARTS

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The Washington Post

In One Work, a Singular Genius

By Blake Gopnik Washington Post Staff Writer

SUBJECT
Rembrandts Hundred Guilder Print
anthologizes almost all the events in
Chapter 19 of the Gospel of Matthew. Its
almost as though the various figures
mentioned in that narrative are lined up,
waiting their turn to come onstage with
Christ.

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Detail from The Crucifixion by Benvenuto

di Giovanni, probably from 1491. Marys
pose is echoed in that of the sick woman
collapsed at Christs feet.

THE SICK
His subjects are usually taken from
everyday life. (J. von Sandrart, 1679)
As per the first verse of Matthew 19,
invalids crowd around Christ waiting to be

healed. Rembrandts fame depended on

these kinds of humble details, and much
work must have gone into the foreshortened
figure on the wheelbarrow (1) and into all
the very different faces (2) of the halt and
lame (3) who have gathered for a Christian
cure. The central subject in the narrative of
Matthew 19:1 gives Rembrandt a perfect
pretext to gather together just the kind of
accidental, incidental detail that his patrons
loved. (Of course, he doesnt need any
excuse to include a gorgeously drawn dog.)
Rembrandt made the pose of the sick
woman lying at Christs feet a close echo of
the pose Renaissance painters had
traditionally given to the Virgin Mary, as she
collapses at the foot of the cross on which
her son is nailed. (Its the pose she has in
Rembrandts own, later crucifixion print
called The Three Crosses.) Because of
such borrowings from earlier art the central
third of this print can provide a kind of
premonition of what is to come, when
Jesuss hands will go from being half
outstretched in blessing, as here, to fully
extended in crucifixion, with his mother
swooning at his feet and his followers taking
up positions all around the pair.

THE CHILDREN
He would spend a whole day or even two
arranging the folds of a turban until he
was satisfied. (A. Houbraken, 1720)
Saint Peter (traditionally shown bald)
tries to push away a mother who asks for a
blessing on her child (4), but Christ holds
his Apostle back, as in the 13th verse of the

Bible passage. The mother is dressed in a

generically Eastern costume, perhaps
evoking the crossing into Judea that the
chapter in Matthew opens with.

THE RICH YOUNG MAN

He often went to
public sales,
where he bought
old and
out-of-fashion
clothes. (F.
Baldinucci, c.
1700)

Christ says it is easier for a camel to pass

through the eye of a needle than for a rich
man to enter the kingdom of God, and the
figures of the camel (6) and the rich
man (7) seem to bookend Rembrandts
print. They are about as far from Christ, and
his grace, as Rembrandts setting allows.
(Could the print even include an evocation
of the needle? The strange figure at the far
right (8), whom the beast seems to be
staring at, has some kind of shaft and loop of
metal hanging from his hat.)

THE ARTIST

Rembrandt
FRICK COLLECTION, NEW YORK
identifies the rich
young man
Detail of Titians
mentioned in the
Portrait of a Man
16th verse by
in a Red Cap, from
dressing him in
1516, an example of
the old-fashioned
Renaissance dress.
finery of a courtier
from a Renaissance portrait (5). He is
shown either gravely pondering the
question he is about to ask (What good
must I do to gain eternal life?) or already
with heavy heart, as the Bible describes
him, at the answer Jesus gives (sell your
possessions and give to the poor and
Rembrandt shows poor people surrounding
the wealthy character.)

THE CAMEL and THE RICH MAN

He was fascinated . . . by every kind of
exotic object. (J. von Sandrart, 1679)
Toward the end of the gospel chapter,

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Rembrandts love of money was such that

as a joke his pupils would paint small
coins onto the pavement, to get him to try
to pick them up. (A. Houbraken, 1720)
The rich man in the print could very well
represent Rembrandt himself. A number of
the self-portraits that he made around this
time depict him in a fur-lined cloak that
closes with gold frogs, as in the print, and
wearing the same 16th-century style of
beret (9). (Rembrandt turned that
outmoded headgear into a kind of personal
trademark his self-portraits were a hot
commodity, produced in quantity and the
beret went on to become a classic symbol of
an artists vocation.) The figures cane
strongly recalls the mahl stick a rod
with a knob at one end that painters used to
steady their hands also seen in many of
Rembrandts self-portraits. Rembrandt
believed in extravagant, conspicuous
consumption. Here, however, he depicts
himself as almost the only figure turned

The 1638 Rembrandt etching Self Portrait

in a Velvet Cap With Plume.

away from Christ, as though the print

acknowledges that the artists worldliness
might also work as a rejection of his saviors
teachings.

THE APOSTLES
He was prolific in painting facial
expressions. (A. Houbraken, 1720)
The arguing men gathered around a
table (10) are usually described as the
Pharisees who, in Matthew 19:3, try to trip
up Christ with a trick question on divorce.
But the figures in the print are so clearly
derived from the seated Apostles in
Leonardo da Vincis Last Supper, which
Rembrandt himself drew copies of, that it
seems more likely that they represent the
same characters here. Throughout this
chapter in Matthew, Christs Apostles
dispute their leaders radical teachings.

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His etchings depend on certain dashes and

strokes, and coarse marks that stand in for an
outline, which nevertheless provide a deep and
powerful chiaroscuro. (F. Baldinucci, c. 1700)
Rembrandt was and is famous for his
chiaroscuro his depictions of hard, bright
light standing out in a dark place. This etching
took chiaroscuro further than any of his earlier
prints. Theres bright light shining through the
archway at the far right of the image, but that
doesnt seem to be the cause of the hard shadows
cast directly behind the figures in the center
(11). Those shadows seem to be cast by a source
somewhere near us, as we stand looking at the
picture as though theres only light-filled air
separating our world from the Bibles.

REFLECTION
He made skillful use of reflections by which
means light could be made to penetrate areas of
shadow. (J. von Sandrart, 1679)
By ever so slightly lightening the dark wall to
the right of Christ (12), Rembrandt reinforces
the sense that theres real, empty space inside
his scene, through which light can bounce
around from one surface to the next. Here, the
light may be coming from Christs glowing aura
which otherwise doesnt seem to have much
effect on the surfaces around it.

He would put light,

shadow and the
outline of objects as
he thought fit, even if
they were in
opposition to
elementary laws of
perspective. (J. von
Sandrart, 1679)
The crisp shadow of
praying hands on
Christs robe (13)
couldnt really be cast
by the praying figure
shown off at an angle
to the right. If the
light in the scene is
imagined as coming
from the world of the
viewer, then its our
clasped hands that we
see imaged on Christ
as though echoing
the praying hands of
the donors who were
often included in
earlier sacred images.
The Hundred
Guilder Print, that is,
subtly evokes our
devout presence in
front of it.

PROCESS
The technique of the Hundred
Guilder Print leaves me breathless,
since I cant understand how he
was able to complete it after such a
crude sketch. (A. Houbraken,
1720)

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Detail of Benozzo
Gozzolis Saint Ursula
With Two Angels and
Donor, circa 1455-60. A
shadow on Christs robe
evokes a similar stance.

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DIRECTION

scratched with a fine needle directly

into the finished plate after its been
etched, and their characteristic
blurred effect disappears after only
the first 10 or 15 images are printed.
Impressions of this image that
preserved the blurrings of drypoint
would have been, and still are,
particularly prized by collectors
giving Rembrandt several different
markets and price points for the
full range of an edition, which could
stretch to several hundred prints.

TECHNIQUE

EVOCATION

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LIGHT

Rembrandts prints were collected

by connoisseurs, eager to appreciate
every step in the masters artistic
process. (One Sicilian nobleman
owned 189 of his etchings; a minor
Dutch painter owned 54.) They
would even buy prints that
Rembrandt designed to look like
random accumulations of
preliminary sketches a casualness
that must in fact have been carefully
calculated by the printmaker.
Similarly, the Hundred Guilder
Print, Rembrandts most technically
ambitious print, simulates the entire
course of its own creation:
Rembrandt carries his image
through from figures rendered only
in rough outline (14), at the far left,
to the immaculately finished details
in the shadows at far right (15). The
print is probably not the product of a
decades worth of work, as has often

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Rembrandts Studies With the Head

of Saskia: random or calculated?

been claimed. It seems more likely it

was done all at one go in 1648 or so.

SKILL
This artists special
accomplishment was the invention
of an extravagant manner of
etching never used by others. (F.
Baldinucci, c. 1700)
The picture includes a full range
of bravura techniques, from crisp
fine lines etched into the copper
plate with acid (16), to blurred,
moody lines done in drypoint (17),
which add depth and character to
areas of shadow. Drypoint lines are

RELIEF
He is good at putting together
tones and half-tones, and has a
great sense of light and shade. (A.
Felibien, 1685)
One of any printmakers most
highly prized skills was the ability to
render the rich three dimensions of
reality using only a few tones of
black and gray. Rembrandts print
sets out to demonstrate a range of
depth effects: from flat
outlines (18), at far left, to figures
that could almost be carved in low
relief (19), to the high-relief of
Christ in the center of the print (20)
(note the deep shadows that cluster
all around him, as though he were a
statue in a niche) to the full depth of
the figures at far right.