Highlights from the Rembrandt – Hoogstraten exhibition at the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna ( October 2024 – January 2025): Analyses & Research
A MYSTERY OF REMBRANDT’S EYES . REMBRANDT SELF-PORTRAITS
At the block-busting just ended Rembrandt-Hoogstraten exhibition ( October 2024 – January 2025) at the stupendous Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, there are 28 works by the master of the masters, as Rembrandt is known for centuries, quite justly. Four of those 24 works on display are self-portraits, very professionally emphasising by the curatorial thought a very high proportion of self-portraits in the Rembrandt’s oeuvre, which is 10%.
To me, these self-portraits are the best, most valuable artistically, part of the exhibition, although there are a few more fantastic works on display. Two self-portraits, painted a few years apart, in 1652 and 1655, are from the fantastic own collection of the Kunsthistorisches Museum, with two others were visiting, the portrait with two golden chains from Madrid ( 1642) , and the one of the last and the most famous ones , with Two Circles, of 1655, from London.
In the Self-Portrait with Two Golden Chains ( 1642), Rembrandt actually decided to demonstrate his status and success, which was not very common at the high art of the day.
His idol and role-model Rubens, after which Rembrandt copied his life and work in its beginning to a very large extent, never did show up his golden chains in self-portraits, just a few parts of it, sometimes. The fact of exhibiting this work in Vienna has provided a very rare chance for anyone visiting to see the work which, although being in the collection of the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum in Madrid, is not on display there, for some reason.
The large portrait made in 1652 at the time of the master’s height , projects his confidence and his calm preoccupation with his professional duties, emphasised by his working dress demonstrated in the Large Portrait as the work is known.
Given the fact that self-portraits of successful artists were a hot potato for the collectors, Rembrandt’s message in his portrait is very clear: “Would you like to have a self-portrait of me, the artist? Here I am, in my working outfit”. This Rembrandt’s work is unsigned which was highly unusual for the master , and it gave the idea to many art experts to suppose that it might be unfinished. The influence of Rembrandt’s beloved Titian here is very visible.
Two other works from this mini-series are exquisite. Both are justly famous. The Small Self-Portrait ( 1655) is painted on the panel, and it has been shortened later on, due to some circumstances. Comparing all four self-portraits exhibited in Vienna, one can see instantly what Rembrandt meant when he was referring to a human face as to an imprint of time.
Already in 1655, as we can see from that phenomenal Small Self-Portrait, Rembrandt’s face has become that ‘map of time and destiny’ as he mentioned. One can stay next to that magnetic small piece of art, of just 48 x 40 cm, indefinitely. And one has a chilling sensation in front of this small work that the great master would open his mouth and speak to you at any moment, so speaking his eyes on the portrait are and the whole small portrait is perceived as being infused with a personal narrative. A time capsule, indeed.
Self-Portrait with Two Circles ( 1655), one of the super-gems of the great The Iveagh Bequest art collection in London, is a classic in the Rembrandt’s own self-portrait gallery of 40 painted, 30 drawn and 7 etched self-portraits. This is also a statement of mastercraft and his own place in art as he saw it.
The circles are referring to Giotto, most likely, but also to a general story of the beginning of fine art as we know it, coming from the ancient Greece, and emphasised ability of artists in drawing fine line of an accomplished geometrical figures as a sign of steadiness of their hand and precision of their eye. Here is an super-accomplished master of his ( and all following ) times, projecting his self-assuredness, and setting in front of us his professional pride, with an unbelievable sense of composition, richness of colour and its balance, remembering the smallest details, such as a hair lock which always was a special message for Rembrandt, and that look of those eyes which are still speaking to us almost four hundred years after that man created his works in his studio in Amsterdam.
The enigma of Rembrandt is something that would never be cracked, we believe. Of all his great admirers, and importantly, great pupils, who took from him the craft, vision, strive, balance of colours, light, and many other secrets, it was, in my opinion, van Gogh who spoke the most eloquently about his beloved artist of all times: ” Rembrandt is so deeply mysterious that he is saying words which does not exist in any language”. Exactly that.
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Portraits of Young Women
At the recently ended unprecedented Rembrandt – Hoogstraten exhibition at the famed Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, Rembrandt’s 24 presented works could be grouped in the themes. One of them is Portraits of Young Women, there are four of them. Apart from one work from that mini-series, three of the portraits are viewed together and mutually referred, with two of them really quite similar in the poses and outlook of the girls portrayed.
Among the portraits presented in Vienna, all are visiting works, and almost all of them with a notable provenance history. The Girl at a Window ( 1645) , where the girl is the youngest of all four we have been seeing at the exhibition, had inspired Sir Joshua Reynolds, arguably the best English portrait artist, for a very good copy which belongs to the splendid Hermitage collection ever since he did it.
The original, after being in several French collections, moved to England in the 18th century, and has stayed there, becoming a part of the Dulwich Gallery a long while ago, and one of its gems. But yet before getting to England, the work belonged to a very illustrious person of the 18th century, Roger de Piles who was not only a well-known art critic, but importantly, a special envoy for Louis XIV for many art-related things, and who also acted as a diplomat, carrying various interesting tasks. De Piles has authored one of the first known catalogues of worthy artists, which is pretty accurate till today. Rembrandt was among the important artists in that mattering art history document, and de Piles owned some of his works.
Technically, the Girl in the Window is the best artwork among the four portraits of girls presented at the exhibition in Vienna. One can feel the artist’s joy while painting the bright and elevating study of a young girl who emanates life and its expectations.
Looking similarly to the fresh model of the Girl at a Window, the portrait, or study known as “The Kitchen Maid’ ( 1651) and produced by Rembrandt several years after the joyful and full of life young women at the window, is produced in more earthy colouristic and with more serious face expression.
After being initially in Paris, the work has made its way to a remarkable collection of the Swedish king Gustav III who was a devoted follower of Voltaire, deeply cultured person who saw his mission as bringing the enlightenment to his subjects to its best and the widest. The work, as many treasures from the Gustav III superb collection , has become part of the Nationalmuseum in Stockholm.
Two other Rembrandt’s studies of young women from the recent exhibition in Vienna are different in appearance and subject-matter despite the fact that they also portray young females. Truly stunning, technique-wise, Girl in a Picture Frame ( 1641), has a dramatic story.
The work, also known as a Jewish Bride, and the Girl in the Hat, since mid-18th century was in a very important collection of the Polish king August Poniatowsky, and it was acquired at the later stage from the Poniatowskies family by a very important European connoisseur of art of the Polish origin Antoni Lanckoronski, from which palace in Vienna, which had a part of it with its great art collection open to the public, the work has been looted by the Nazis during the Second World War. The strong Lanckoronski family fought back immediately after the war, not wasting any time on it, and they succeeded, receiving their precious and great Rembrandt back early enough, a couple of years after the war ended. Due to all kinds of considerations and circumstances of life, this fantastic, extremely masterly and expressive study by Rembrandt was not seen by the public, or almost anyone, for almost 50 years, just think about it.
The Girl in a Hat was returned to the public in post-Soviet Poland in the mid-1990s, and it was then when the members of the Lanckoronskies family decided to donate a part of their priceless collection to their native country, including this very special study. Since then, this splendid work belongs to the great collection of the Royal Castle in Warsaw. It is one of just three Rembrandts in Poland, with its quite rich and well regarded various art collections.
The last one of the four Rembrandt’s works portraying young women during a very productive for the artist decade between 1641 and 1651 is special and interesting work loaned for the exhibition in Vienna by the National Galleries of Scotland, and which is a precious art piece for entire Scotland and its very rich museums, being the only Rembrandts in their possession. A Woman in the Bed ( 1647) also known as Sarah Awaiting Tobias, suggestively, is a beautiful and deep piece of art illuminated with that magnificent light spot which made the work into a masterpiece.
For centuries, the art experts have been discussing many things about this great work: the real plot, the real model, the real circumstances behind it. But it seems that as for so many of Rembrandt’s works, we would have to be satisfied with only versions and suggestions on this incredible portraying of a Biblical story and the woman in Rembrandt’s life who was modelling for it.
To me, A Woman in Bed looks very close to the famous Danae, in the pose of a reclining woman, the gesture of her hands, and the expression of her face. Both females look like sisters to me. The work which was exhibited in Vienna, and which is one and a half time smaller than famous large masterpiece bought at the time by Catherine the Great with a help of famous philosopher Didrot whom she knew personally, has been created by Rembrandt four years after he re-worked the original Danae in 1643, changing her face, most importantly, from his late Saskia wife to supposedly the face of his lover at the time Geertje Dircx. In any case, after intensive re-make of magnificent Danae large painting, Rembrandt might well be in the mood of continuing the successful motto, untrivial composition, vivid dynamics of the work, as we can see the repetition of all of it in much smaller A Woman in Bed created four years later, with change the placement of the main female figure from left to the right.
This intriguing and attractive work belonged to various aristocratic collections in England, until making its way to Edinburgh.
This work also has become a cameo, a very famous one. It is a pity that the curators in Vienna did not include the story and fact about this rare art cameo in the exhibition at the Kunsthistorisches Museum. I will come back to this important episode soon.
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Rembrandt’s Work Cameo
At the recent Rembrandt – Hoogstraten exhibition in Vienna, there was one of Rembrandt’s very impressive works which does have a specific history and dimension in history of art. A Woman in Bed ( 1647). A worthy, vivid and not ordinary work, which in my view does have a direct inter-relation with Rembrandt’s famous Danae which was completed just four year earlier, and which according to some experts is considered to be one of the most enigmatic works of Rembrandt ( most likely, due to the fact that art historians are not quite sure still about the model, which most likely was his demanding lover Geertie Dircx whose face we also see at the Danae), the work has a very special place in the history of art thanks to its very unusual role, the one of a cameo.
While it had happened that prolific artists portrayed the works of some other ones on their canvases, partially so, mostly, as a part of the milieu on their works, or as an artistic ‘watermark’ with regard to some episode, inter-connection or biographical landmark, it is quite rare that an artist would reconstruct an entire work of the other artist in his own painting. But it is exactly what has happened with this mysterious Rembrandt’s woman a hundred works after she was created when his work in its entirety has been reproduced and has become part of another very famous artwork, the one of exotic and very talented Jean-Etienne Liotard, a French artist who lived and worked in Switzerland, apart of many of his travels . As far as I know, this one is the only existing full cameo of Rembrandt’s works in the history of art.
Liotard has decided to reproduce Rembrandt’s Woman in Bed in his portrait of another illustrious personality, Francois Tronchin, who was a well-known lawyer and art collector from a very senior family in Geneva at the time. Tronchins were lawyers and bankers, friends with Voltaire and Didrot, people with a great taste, knowledge and understanding of art. Person portrayed by Liotard ( and Liotard has painted many members of that family in individual portraits, all extremely masterly ones), Francois Tronchin is known in the history of art as one of the firsts collectors-dealers who also was a very able playwright, as many highly educated people were at his time. A large part of his collection was notably bought by Catherine the Great , with help of Didrot, whom she knew personally and whose taste she trusted, when she was establishing the collection of the Hermitage, and most of that extremely rare and very valuable collection was staying in the Hermitage ever since. But not this fancy portrait, which is yet more masterly given its small size, 38 x 46 cm, and its very demanding technique, which is pastel on parchment. This work, after long staying in the Torchins and their successors family, was sold just once, to the very good collection to the Cleveland Museum of Art.
It is such a pity that the curators of the recent important Rembrandt – Hoogstraten exhibition in Vienna oversaw the most direct and intriguing connection between Rembrandt’s Woman in Bed and its cameo on the Liotard’s pastel portrait of Francois Torchin. So it is good to mention it.
Liotard himself was a great master whose abilities to draw were brilliant. He was such a master of pastel that he probably should be regarded as the ultimate master of this demanding technique. He was highly educated, an expert on old masters, and very well connected, travelling extensively, being a member of an entourage of high-end French aristocrats and participating in their diplomatic affairs actively. His role in those missions was to paint Popes, Imperial families and other important personalities and decision-makers of the time, as producing and gifting such portraits was an important diplomatic tool of the time. His trips included Naples and Turkey where Liotard lived for several years non-stop. Additionally to his brilliantly executed artworks, Liotard left to us his book ‘Treatise on Art and Paintry’ which was one of the most important professional manuals for generations and which still is brilliant, as probably everything that that talented man did in his life.
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3D in art of the 17th century: Rembrandt’s revelations
At the recent meaningful Rembrandt – Hoogstraten exhibition at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, among 24 works by Rembrandt, the two are peculiar due to powerful optical effects. Both works created by Rembrandt in the same year, 1641, were asked for this exhibition from their holders, The Royal Collection of His Majesty King Charles III and the art collection of the Royal Castle in Warsaw, for this very reason, its amazing 3D effect, yet more amazing given the fact that both works were created almost four hundred years ago. This is really a dizzy fact of the astonishing eye and imagination of Rembrandt who was 35 years old when achieving that effect which was stunning for the 17th century visuals.
The concept of the Rembrandt – Hoogstraten exhibition ( October 2024 – January 2025) is to project the Rembrandt’s outstanding and truly revolutionary visionary to his pupils, in this case, one of them, Samuel Hoogstraten who has become well-known for his masterly rendition of perspective and volume of subjects in his works, with their impressive visual effects.
But of course, Rembrandt is a towering figure in the whole history of art, and it can be seen in every single work at this exhibition, as at any other. But the fact of inclusion of two outstanding works by Rembrandt who did create the 3D effect in his paintings back in the 17th century, also given that one of them is painted on a panel where it is doubly difficult to create volume which stands out, is a very peculiar detail and a considerable achievement of the recent exhibition in Vienna.
I did comment earlier in this review on the interesting destiny of the Girl in a Picture Frame painting ( 1641) . With regard to the other presented work, Portrait of Agatha Bas ( 1641) from the Royal Collection in London, the work is known widely for its beauty, transparency of details, and that unusual placing of Agatha’s, who was Rembrandt’s neighbour and the wife of a wool merchant, who kept a store nearby, right hand in a complete novelty, freshness and freedom atypical for the portraits at the time. Some Rembrandt experts are praising that hand as if laying on the frame as if it is a wall, as one of the most intriguing elements in Rembrandt’s oeuvre. In any case, a very competent curators at the Royal Collection do officially list this Rembrandt work in their stupendous collection as ‘one of the most beautiful portraits in the Royal Collection’, thus officiating the work as the gem of the superbly rich collection, very justly so.
Given the fact that the both works were created by the 35-year old master in the same year, and that in both cases, his stunning 3D effect was masterly created by Rembrandt in the part of the hands of his prototypes ( with a note that Rembrandt’s hands are unparalleled in the entire history of art) , that he saw the opportunity and knew how to draw to the effect of that perfect optical illusion, show us that in that year, Rembrandt was intrigued, amused and motivated by an opportunity to create on his panel and canvas something utterly effective and completely new, which was not seeing in paintings yet.
Perhaps, the curators of the Vienna exhibition could get yet more effect with exhibiting those two very special visiting works created in the same year and with obviously the same idea by the artist, next to each other, with a brief professional explanation. But in any case, we all were privileged to see live, not in reproductions, those two fantastic works by the great master in which he testified to his genius fully, creating perfect 3D images 384 years ago. Just think about it, and about the unbeatable origin of human genius, AI or not.
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Titus Reading, Portrait of Fatherly Love
There rarely has been as dramatic and not ordinary, unconventional father-son and son-father relationships as between Rembrandt and his son Titus. To start with, the boy was the only from four children that Saskia bore to Rembrandts which survived, three other died in infancy and early age. Thus, Titus has become precious for Rembrandt, an apple of his eye, understandably. Then, just a year after Titus was born, Saskia died, leaving Rembrandt in a deep sorrow. Saskia’s unexpected and sudden loss highly intensified Rembrandt’s closeness to his and Saskia’s only surviving child. Rembrandts loved Titus and cared about him with double energy and attention.
With years to come, Titus paid his father also in an intense, loyal and elaborated way, fencing him from the creditors, doing everything possible and more to provide his great and deeply unhappy and unlucky father as normal conditions for life and work as possible. The bond between father and son and son and father in the case of Rembrandt and Titus was truly special and admirable, especially given the highly demanding circumstances of life and choppy waters for both of them.
Sadly, Titus died young, at just 23, most likely because of plague, a year before his great father’s death. Titus’ own only daughter died six months after his sudden passing. And if not that tragedy, Rembrandt could live and work longer. His attachment to Titus through his life was too strong to survive his only son’s merciless passing. Rembrandt also had a daughter from his later lover, but it was another story altogether.
Symbolically, Titus died in the age in which his father started to paint professionally, or became recognised like a professional artist, at 23. We do not know much about Titus, but some art historians believe that he was also an artist like his father. For Rembrandt for whom symbolism was the way of life, such harsh coincidence had to add to the severe blow of his Titus’ passing.
As it is known, Rembrandt was master of portrait and portrait studies. Not only was it a profitable and safe genre it was, thus resulting in many able masters who knew their trade professionally well, but for the artists whose personalities liked challenges, it was also highly motivating professional exercise providing them with an opportunity to sport the competition with many able colleagues. Rembrandt was and still be the best portraitist ever, even four hundred years after his passing. Why is it? What is Rembrandt’s portrait secret? I read it in the combination of a very shrewd psychologist with a superb master of drawing. And if one can learn how to draw to the best, to become an insightful psychologist does not come from one’s studies, but from the characters, genes and disposition in life, including one’s personal attitude to others and one’s genuine interest towards people in many of its aspects.
For some reason, there is no affirmed knowledge among art historians on the exact number of portraits of Titus made by his great father. There are different figures stated in different sources, from four to over a dozen. After doing my own research and comparative studies, I came to the conclusion that Rembrandt painted 9 portraits of Titus, with a possibility of one more. What grabs the attention with regard to this particular subject of Rembrandt’s portraits is that they all are made with palpable love and superb gentleness which definitely was either in fashion of a portraiture of the 17th century in general, nor was it common for Rembrandt’s portraits, most of them great artworks. Analysing all nine, possibly ten Rembrandt’s portraits of his only son, with uneasy life for both of them, one can say that actually the subject-matter of all these works of the great master is fatherly love, warm, continuing, gentle and deep. And this is an special and valuable phenomenon and treat in the large and versatile Rembrandt’s oeuvre, given the number of the works.
All of Rembrandt’s portraits of Titus are outstanding and simply wonderful. They are both the outcome and source of humanity for our civilization for as long as it will be there. There is not without a reason that many people are specifically bringing their children to see and to explain about different portraits of Titus by his great father to the great museums which are lucky to have them, from London to Washington.
Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna with its outstanding collection brought the portrait of Titus reading to the recent exhibition from their own collection. This is a rare treat, even among all nine-ten Rembrandt’s portraits of his son known. This portrait breathes love, in Titus’ fleeting smile, in the light on both his face and the book he reads, in his face’s expression. In composition, in the boy’s pose, in the chosen matter of book and reading, just everything. Titus was 15 at the time of his father portraying him. The portrait fully projects the father’s expectations for his son’s educated, bright future.
Rembrandt had all the reasons for such expectations. One year on, Titus was busy with handling affairs of his father , together with Rembrandt’s lover and mother of his only surviving daughter, and has become the person closest to his father, both family-like and professionally. And busy Titus was. But he was ready for that. And willing, importantly.
For some reason, the year of the portrait’s making mentioned in the exhibition’s materials is not correct. It is believed that the portrait was made in 1656, according to some sources, it could be 1657. In the exhibition’s materials, it is mentioned as 1658.
In my opinion, the curators of the recent exhibition in Vienna, could do a better job in underlining and explaining to thousands of visitors of the block-busting exhibition some really important episodes and connections regarding such unique artist as Rembrandt, additionally to a very linear and rather shallow, mechanical comments that were produced in the exhibition guide printed materials. Of course, many people know the historical background and personal context of Rembrandt’s painting, but not all of them. It matters, especially given the fact that the exhibition at the Kunsthistorisches Museum was the first Rembrandt personal in Austria ever, amazingly.
Better commentaries or not, the joy of seeing Titus, Reading created by his great father with an incredible masterly that brought the light of his fatherly love to us through four centuries and which graciously keeps that fleeting smile of a real 15-year boy three hundred and sixty eight years after he was posing for his loving father, makes humanity, human emotions and memory absolutely real. And living, thanks Heavens.
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Rembrandt’s Elderly
Among the 28 Rembrandt’s works presented at the recent exhibition in Vienna, there are not that many of the works in which he is still an unparalleled artist, three and a half centuries after his passing, and almost four centuries after the period he worked, his portraits and studies of an elderly.
If not Rembrandt with his inexplicable ability to portray age, we would be much poorer artistically and intellectually. With artistic aspect direct and obvious, intellectual aspect of the civility and human history’s enrichment by Rembrandt’s portraying elderly people comes out of his genius in bringing out by artistic means a very deep psychological aspects not just of an age as the result and a certain stage , but as a process and what does it brings with it, what does it change, and what does it mean, or might mean because the best Rembrandt’s portraits of elderly are always suggestive, leaving viewers with the space for his or her own thinking. This is what the best art is about, as it does not prescribe or placate ( that’s why Warhool might be stunning, sometimes, but mostly is one-dimensional ), but it prompts one to think, and it leaves the space for one’s own flow of thoughts. And that’s why van Gogh is forever. As Rembrandt is.
At the exhibition in the Vienna’s Kunsthistorisches Museum, the essentially important aspect of the Rembrandt’s oeuvre, his works on elderly, is represented basically by just one work, known as the Portrait of and Old Woman, and sometimes, as The Prophetess Anna, created in 1639. The curators choosed the second title, attributing the year of the work in their exhibition guide materials wrongly, again. The criterion for including the work from the Kunsthistorisches Museum into the exhibition probably had to do with the light element there, which is a superbly masterly one in the work, and which went along well with the exhibition’s concept focused on Colour and Illusion.
It always is a special moment to see Rembrandt’s elderly directly, not in reproductions. If Rembrandt himself was very focused on the elderly faces, being genuinely interested in an intricate way of portraying by his own hand, imagination, vision and strokes of his brush what he himself called as ‘the map of life’ referring to aging faces, we who are able to see these his works directly, are as having two university courses at once: on the way of actually doing all those wrinkles, in a professional master-craft lesson, and on the understanding and transcending what the aging and age is about, in a psychology ‘lecture’.
There is an understanding among the Rembrandt experts with regard to this stunning panel , which came to the unbelievably rich collection which now belongs to the Kunsthistorisches Museum in 1772 from Bratislava and stays there, that some elements of it could be done, possibly by some Rembrandt’s pupils in his workshop. Such a conclusion was reached by the comparison of the thickness of the layers of oil in different parts of this work. But there is no dispute about Rembrandt’s authorship of that face on the portrait, which is quite well known to those who are interested in Rembrandt’s art. No pupil could not produce that face and that expression.
The same woman appeared in several well-known Rembrandt’s works, surely for over a half of a dozen, by my calculations. Initially it was believed that it was the artist’s mother, but later on, the opinion started to prevail that doubts it given the number of works, and variety of images, its meanings, costumes, etc. It is largely believed now that the person on all these works was rather one of few existing Rembrandt’s models with whom he worked for a while, and who also were involved often in sitting for his workshop, with so many of his pupils drawing that woman.
There is a miraculous thing with Rembrandt’s elderly. Normally, portraits of an elderly people are not grabbing our attention with that grip and power and certainly not keeping its hold on us, viewevers, for long. Except Rembrandt’s ones. You get attracted by his portraits of elderly as by an especially strong magnet, and you can watch those faces, for an indefinite period of time. Why is that? I wish I knew for sure. I remember some parts of Rembrandt’s portraits of elderly that I saw in various galleries world-wide, for many years. They have stayed vivid in my memory for decades. I think that the reason for it is the expression on their faces. That ‘book of life’ which Rembrandt got, that he was able to create by moves and colours of his brush, and that he succeeded to transcend to the future.
The expressions of the faces of Rembrandt’s elderly, not all of them, but in quite many cases, as in this outstanding portrait, is one of the top achievements of humanity and civility. And it is also an incredibly interesting, talented, attractive and still living art manual of life and its perception, deep, enlightening, prompting us to think. What a treasure.
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Rembrandt’s Earliest Pendant Portraits
At the recent major exhibition at the Viennese Kunsthistorisches Museum dedicated to Rembrandt ( first ever solo exhibition of the great master in Austria, amazingly) and his pupil Hoogstraten, portraits took the lead, expectedly. Among many brilliant ones, Kunsthistorisches Museum was justly proud to present one of the super-gems of their own collection, the duo of portraits of seated man and woman.
The gem it is for several reasons: it is a pendant portrait, with an established and proven understanding and knowledge of the duo portraits’ pendency ( which is not always easy to establish, especially in the case of the old masters, due to the severe lack of documentation, with at least one pair of Rembrandt’s portraits are still debated and being extensively researched in order to establish precisely this criterion, and couple of more are still in doubt), it is in a very good state, with Portrait of a Woman Seated being restored recently with the support of a private donor, honorably; it is the earliest known Rembrandt’s pendant portraits created in 1632 ( previously it was believed that the earliest ones is the famous full-lengths portraits of Soolmans , but it was created in 1634). And on the top of it all, those are really masterly made, extremely good portraits of the couple in question.
Pendant portraits are those that have been made usually of couples, married ones, just married ones, as a celebratory wedding gift, as a gift for certain anniversaries and special dates, and for special occasions, such as moving to the new, more grand house, or alike. Those pairs of portraits had certain standards to meet for an artist. Not only they had to be of the same size, with figures portrayed in the same way – full-length, half-length, etc. – , but importantly, the positions of both people in pendant portraits had to match each other, to look each towards the other, almost ‘meeting’ on the wall the pendant portrait would be placed.
Rembrandt is known for authoring something like a half of a dozen or a bit more of such demanding pendant portraits. The most famous of those is the full-length stunning portrait of the family of Soolmans ( and normally full-length portraits were created of royalty and high nobility) on the occasion of their marriage. That miracle of a portraiture, after being with the French branch of the Rothschilds for almost 240 years, from 1878 onward, was bought in the biggest private sale of our time by the governments of France and the Netherlands in a joint bid at the Christie’s in 2015-2016, and is on a 6-months’ display run in between the Louvre and the Rijksmuseum ever since. And it is this extraordinary art treasure that was believed to be the earliest pendant portraits made by Rembrandt.
But as it happened, it is the other Rembrandt’s Pendant Portraits, the ones at the splendid collection of the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, that he did create two years earlier, of the married couple whose names we do not know unfortunately. These earliest known to us Rembrandt’s Pendant Portraits are both very talented and graceful. The portrait of the Man Seated is truly superb. It is vivid, dynamic, and executed in the way that the man in the portrait is just about to speak to you. It is the best and rarest achievement in any portraiture. The Woman Seated is cheerful and graceful, which is not necessarily the case with many of Remnbrandt’s portraying of female sitters or personages. He obviously felt at much more ease and had a better, more nuanced understanding of males when portraying or featuring them. But in this case, recently restored portrait of the Woman Seated, which was placed by Rembrandt on his portrait to face her husband with that inner smile which is probably one of the most difficult things to create on canvas, is as masterly, as gentle, with transpiring artist’s likeness of his subject, which is a rare thing to see indeed in Rembrandt’s oeuvre.
In fact, presenting such an outstanding pair of portraits, especially from their own collection, the organisers of the recent exhibition could present them in a better way, more visible , and with a clear understanding by the public what a miracle of style, detail, and history they were lucky to observe. But in any case, it always is a great opportunity to enjoy such authentic pieces of great art and its history.