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Oracle of DelphiArt Legends: Rembrandt
September 13th 2006 23:57
Today's featured artist biography: Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn (July 15, 1606 or 1607– October 4, 1669). A visual artist who is generally considered one of the greatest painters in European art history and the most important in Dutch history. Rembrandt was also a proficient printmaker and made many drawings. His contributions to art came in a period that historians call the Dutch Golden Age (roughly coinciding with the seventeenth century), in which Dutch world power, political influence, science, commerce, and culture — particularly painting — reached their pinnacle.
It is importamt to remember that for most modern observers Rembrandt's art has attained a kind of universal familiarity and popularity. Yet the biblical scenes and the self-portraits that today form the hallmark of his art were by no means typical of Dutch pictures of the 17th century; more commonly, his contemporaries produced landscapes, still lifes, or genre scenes of daily life that never held great interest for Rembrandt. In his own era Rembrandt achieved greatest fame as the most fashionable portrait painter of Amsterdam during the 1630s, but he was eventually eclipsed even during his own lifetime by younger rivals, including some of his own students. Another major field of accomplishment lay in the medium of etching. Rembrandt commanded high prices for his prints even during his lifetime, and his technical mastery had a lasting effect on printmakers for centuries.
It is importamt to remember that for most modern observers Rembrandt's art has attained a kind of universal familiarity and popularity. Yet the biblical scenes and the self-portraits that today form the hallmark of his art were by no means typical of Dutch pictures of the 17th century; more commonly, his contemporaries produced landscapes, still lifes, or genre scenes of daily life that never held great interest for Rembrandt. In his own era Rembrandt achieved greatest fame as the most fashionable portrait painter of Amsterdam during the 1630s, but he was eventually eclipsed even during his own lifetime by younger rivals, including some of his own students. Another major field of accomplishment lay in the medium of etching. Rembrandt commanded high prices for his prints even during his lifetime, and his technical mastery had a lasting effect on printmakers for centuries.
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